Clips from the Times on the Diallo Case Verdict. A Chronology of the Case is available.
February 25, 2000
Defense Strategies Paid Off for
Diallo CopsBy THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK -- Two strategies by defense lawyers
-- one before the trial opened, the other near its
finish -- helped four New York City police officers win
acquittals Friday in the killing of an unarmed West
African immigrant.The first was winning a change of venue from the Bronx
to upstate Albany, where the case had not assumed the
massive symbolic proportions that it had in New York.The second was putting the four officers on the stand,
one after the other as the centerpiece of their case, to
repeat the defense mantra this was a tragic mistake
rather than a murder."What made the difference is the boys themselves,"
said Stephen Worth, attorney for Edward Officer
McMellon, after the verdicts were returned. "What they
had to say is the truth."There was no disputing the trial's central facts: The
officers had fired 41 shots at Amadou Diallo, striking
him 19 times. Diallo, who was unarmed, was killed in
the early hours of Feb. 4, 1999.The defense, once it relocated the case upstate, then
focused on allowing the jurors a look at the officer's
mindsets that night. While the typical murder trial
defendant would never testify -- think O.J. Simpson --
the four officers were almost compelled to take the
stand.After months of public demonization, the defense was
able to present the defendants in a different light on the
witness stand."The defense was able to humanize them," said Timothy
M. Donohue, a defense attorney who followed the case.
"In a case like this, it's important to humanize the
defendants."Officer Sean Carroll, who mistook Diallo's wallet for a
handgun, broke down weeping on the stand while
recounting the last few moments of Diallo's life.Carroll told the jury how he held the mortally wounded
Diallo's hand, rubbed the dying man's face and begged,
"Please don't die."The jury apparently focused on the officers' testimony.
During their three days of deliberations, they asked to
rehear each officer's version of what happened as they
moved in on Diallo.Carroll's lawyer, John Patten, agreed with Worth on the
importance of the officers' testimony. The four cops had
refused to testify before the grand jury, which led to the
initial murder indictments.But it also prevented prosecutors from impeaching the
officers under oath with any previous statements that
the defendants had made about the shooting."Our best evidence," Patten said, "was always our
clients. That was the most powerful evidence we had."It was in December, two months before the trial began,
that the defense team made its other big move --
winning an extremely rare change of venue motion from
the Bronx to Albany.An appeals court agreed with the defense contention
that finding an impartial Bronx jury would be
impossible. Attorney Ed Hayes, a former Bronx
prosecutor and a Court TV anchor, said that was the
key to the case."That was everything, the whole case," Hayes said.
"There's no way they could have had a fair jury trial in
the Bronx. That made all the difference in the world."-------------------
Feb 26, 2000
Verdict Elicits Sharp Feelings on
Both SidesBy ROBERT D. McFADDEN
Strong and deeply
polarized emotions --
anger, bitter indignation and
stunned disbelief on one side,
and expressions of relief and
vindication on the other --
rippled across the metropolitan
area last night as politicians,
community leaders and
ordinary New Yorkers reacted
swiftly to the acquittal of four
white police officers in the
killing of an unarmed black
immigrant, Amadou Diallo.In a case that had painfully
divided the city along racial
and political lines for more
than a year, the verdict --
televised and watched in
offices, in homes, in stores and
shopping centers -- came in the
late afternoon as an enormous
emotional release for people
whose feelings had been
building toward a crescendo
during the three-week trial.In Brooklyn and the Bronx, in
Queens, Harlem and Midtown
Manhattan, at City Hall and in
the suburbs, the reaction of
thousands of people was
spontaneous, vehement and,
judging by rough numbers in
quick interviews and by the
heat of the comments, largely
negative.Crowds chanting "Murderers!"
and "Shame!" gathered in a
cold, pouring rain outside the
courthouse in Albany, and
outside the Bronx building
where Mr. Diallo was slain in
a hail of 41 bullets. As police
officers watched silently, many
in the crowds shouted angrily
of injustice upon injustice.Two men held up black wallets
outside the vestibule on
Wheeler Avenue where the victim died. "It looks like a
gun," someone jeered. Mr. Diallo had been pulling out
his wallet when the officers, who said they thought it
was a gun, shot him."I cried when those cops went free," said Cecile E.
Bailey, 57, who has lived on Story Avenue, near the
scene of the shooting, for 28 years. "You don't shoot a
human being 41 times. You don't shoot a dog 41 times.
Those same cops may come back into the Bronx and
could do the same thing to another child."Commuters in Midtown and people on the streets of
Harlem, Brooklyn and other sections of the city paused
for interviews or to talk among themselves about the
outcome. Most said they thought that the verdict was
unfair, or that the prosecution had performed
inadequately. Many expressed the hope that federal
civil rights charges might be brought against the
officers.Some expressed no surprise, saying they had known
when the venue was switched to Albany that the
officers would be acquitted. Others said they were
flabbergasted that the officers had not been found guilty
of something, anything.Jonathan Johnson, a black unemployed Harlem resident,
was astonished. "Acquitted on all charges? Not even
reckless endangerment?" he said. "I bet if a stray bullet
had hit a white person they would have been convicted
of something. It goes back to slavery. They think that
we are property and they can kill us."And Christopher Love, 34, of Harlem, said the
acquittals had "given the officers the right to come
shoot people of color."There were televised pleas for calm by City Hall, by
Mr. Diallo's parents and by the Rev. Al Sharpton, who
insisted: "We do not want to tarnish his name with any
violence. Let not one brick be thrown. Let not one
bottle be thrown. Do not confuse us with the violent
ones, the reckless ones."And despite the intensity of feelings over the verdict,
there were no reports of serious or widespread
violence, although a few scuffles broke out, people
banged on cars outside the 43rd Precinct station, a
group of marchers tried to disrupt traffic on the Bronx
River Parkway and at least two people were arrested.Reaction to the verdict was hardly one-sided, and it
often crossed racial lines. Some whites said they
thought the officers should have been found guilty of
something, while there were blacks who said they
thought that the officers had received a fair trial and
that justice had been done."I'm pleased with the outcome," said Mayimuna
Pettiford, a black neighbor of one of the acquitted
officers, Edward McMellon, in Park Slope, Brooklyn.
'I've known him and his family for 10 years. He's not a
racist. He's an empathetic soul. That's why he became a
cop."Much of the reaction was predictable: the black and
Hispanic communities in Harlem denouncing the
acquittals as a travesty, while a mixed response was
more apparent in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, and the
Riverdale section of the Bronx. "Justice was done, the
system worked," said Steve Shek, 32, of Sheepshead
Bay, Brooklyn. "It was a horrible accident, and the
cops deserve to go free. They should never have been
charged in the first place."At City Hall, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani expressed
sympathy for the Diallo family and called the shooting a
tragedy, but he also voiced support for the acquitted
police officers and, paraphrasing the judge, said that
"the book is closed on this case."He said the trial, which had been moved to Albany
from the Bronx because of pretrial publicity and what
he called a "carnival atmosphere," had been fair, and
he expressed doubt that a federal review would find
any basis for a new trial of the officers on civil rights
charges.At his side, Police Commissioner Howard Safir voiced
similar sentiments, calling the verdicts justified.Beyond the metropolitan area, the verdict even
attracted attention on the presidential campaign trail.Former Senator Bill Bradley, speaking to reporters in
Everett, Wash., said he was stunned by the acquittals. "I
think that it shows that when racial profiling seeps so
deeply into somebody's mind, a wallet in the hand of a
white man looks like a wallet, but a wallet in the hand
of a black man looks like a gun."Vice President Al Gore, flying from Ohio to California,
issued a more neutral statement, urging calm and noting
that the case would now be reviewed by the Justice
Department. "That review should be thorough and fair,"
Mr. Gore said.
------------------------------
February 26, 2000
A Story the Jury Never Heard
By JEFFERY ABRAMSON
Waltham, Mass.-- In the end, the defense
humanized the four police officers who shot
Amadou Diallo, and the prosecution left the dead man
without face, without voice.No one yet knows specifically what influenced the
jurors to find the officers not guilty of all charges in the
killing of Mr. Diallo, but surely one important factor is
that the jurors could imagine themselves fearful and
panicked in the way the officers said they were.But no one told Mr. Diallo's story; no one made it easy
for jurors to imagine themselves behaving as Mr.
Diallo did that evening. It was as if the officers had a
free pass to suggest what they wanted to about Mr.
Diallo -- he must have had something to hide, maybe he
bootlegged illegal videos, maybe he was a robbery
lookout. The prosecution was somewhat hampered by
rules about the evidence it could present, but nothing
would have prevented it from recreating for the jurors
the terror Mr. Diallo must have felt.The defense seemed to be free to portray the victim any
way it wanted to without a shred of evidence either that
he did any of the things it was suggesting or that
responsible police officers could have had any basis
for acting as if he were engaged in illegal activity.But really the jurors had to choose between one of two
stories. In one story, police are homicidal maniacs -- or
at least reckless, trigger-happy thugs -- who are itching
to empty 41 bullets into a person on the street. In the
other story, the Bronx is a scary place, police work is
dangerous and the officers sincerely thought Mr. Diallo
was reaching for a gun. The prosecution never gave the
jurors sufficient reason to choose the first story.From the beginning, the prosecutors thought that the 41
shots fired at Mr. Diallo were evidence enough of
malice and murder in the cops' hearts, at least at some
point. But jurors do not typically react to excessive
shots as evidence of guilt. Instead they usually see the
"overshooting" as evidence that the police defendants
are telling the truth when they say they were reacting in
panic and put themselves on automatic pilot.I once helped prosecute a prostitute who had stabbed a
victim 81 times. I remember thinking that the jury
would surely convict once they were made to count out
the time it takes to inflict 81 stab wounds. But what I
learned afterward was that the sheer number of the
wounds seemed to the jury like evidence that the
woman was telling the truth when she said she was
responding more out of fear of attack than any
deliberate plan to murder.In the Diallo trial, the prosecution's cause was not
helped when Schrrie Elliott, the only eyewitness other
than the defendants, testified to hearing the word "guns"
shouted. Ms. Elliott contradicted herself often on the
stand, and many observers assumed the jurors would
discount her testimony. But they specifically asked for
it to be read back. And she, the only neutral eyewitness,
essentially confirmed the officers' account that they
thought they had seen a gun.Was there a racial element in the jury's decision? The
Albany jury included four African-Americans, and so
perhaps we can say race was not the deciding factor.But still it appears the one thing that made the police
story believable, above all others, was that to these
jurors -- and perhaps to any who could have been found
in Albany, regardless of race -- it seems reasonable for
police officers to jump quickly to the conclusion that a
black man reaching for something in his pocket must be
reaching for a gun. Nothing else is as decisive in this
case as this one element, and it is racial.A jury in the Bronx might well have decided the case
differently, not just because the jury would have been
predominantly African-American there, but because
jurors in the Bronx would have had a better, more
informed basis for judging the reasonableness of the
quick-draw strategy of the street crimes unit in the
Bronx.Jeffrey Abramson, a professor of legal studies and
politics at Brandeis University, is the author of "We,
the Jury: The Jury System and the Ideal of
Democracy."
------------------------------------February 26, 2000
The Verdict: Poor Training and
SupervisionBy RICHARD D. EMERY
So what are we to think? Amadou Diallo, an
innocent unarmed African man, standing in front of
his apartment building in the Bronx, was gunned down
last year by four white New York City police officers.Now, a racially mixed jury in Albany has declared the
four officers not guilty.Of course, as we know from the televised trial, the
jury's verdict seems reasonable, given the evidence.
Even police officers have a right to be proved guilty
beyond a reasonable doubt, and the jury decided, quite
responsibly, that there wasn't proof beyond a
reasonable doubt.To understand this tragedy, and to place the blame
where it justifiably lies, one must start from the
inescapable first premise: the jury believed that the
officers feared for their own lives. But why should four
officers carrying guns on patrol overreact with 41
shots? How could they have misread the situation so
tragically?These police officers, who were part of the city's street
crimes unit, were poorly prepared, poorly trained and
poorly supervised. Put simply, they panicked in a
situation that called for equanimity, tactical forethought,
common sense and proper procedures.First and foremost, officers in plainclothes cannot
assume that in a high-crime area, an innocent citizen
will believe that four armed men who approach him
aggressively are police officers. To an innocent
civilian not looking for trouble, these four men could
simply look like four thugs looking for trouble. Why not
take out your wallet and just give it to them? Is it hard
to imagine that an innocent citizen would react to four
armed men with an abject fear that could easily be
mistaken for non-compliance with police commands?Just as important, police officers, who are trained to
aggressively and quickly take control of street
situations, must also protect themselves behind a car or
door, or other street fixture, so they are in fact safe.
This way they need not panic or overreact when some
event takes a turn they did not foresee.Moreover, if a suspect actually does have a gun, which
is a rare event, a confrontation can be avoided by
knowing when taking "control" means slowing the
confrontation rather than escalating the fear through
overtly aggressive tactics.In 1997, Police Commissioner Howard Safir decided
to triple the size of the department's street crimes unit to
380 officers. There was no way to properly train every
officer who was suddenly thrust into one of the most
dangerous kinds of police work around.As it was, when officers were transferred to
undercover assignments, they attended only a three-day
workshop that included some review of firearms and
tactics. Now, there is extra training, but it is still not
nearly enough. The police department must take tactical
and safety training more seriously. It must rigorously
supervise and discipline officers that ignore police
procedures. It is not the number of officers out there
that counts. It's the quality of the officers.Unless Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and the department are
far more diligent in preparing our police for service, it
is likely that more public tragedies will fill the
airwaves.Richard D. Emery, a civil rights lawyer in private
practice, represents the public advocate's office and
other clients in suits against the New York City Police
Department.
February 28, 1999
Dispelling New York's Latest Fear
by WILLIAM J. BRATTON
There was a crisis of fear in New York City in the early 1990's, and for good reason. Annual totals of 2,000 homicides, 6,000 shootings and 100,000 robberies are enough to frighten anyone. Residents had little confidence in the ability of the police to control and reduce violence, especially in minority neighborhoods.But from 1994 on, the Police Department changed the reality and the perception. The department replaced what had been an uncoordinated, scattershot enforcement effort with focused strategic plans. In the 1990's, felony crimes have been cut in half, homicides reduced by nearly 70 percent, and order has been largely restored. The crisis of fear about crime is over.
But now we know that New York is facing a different crisis of fear. Though minority communities have benefited enormously from reduced crime, they now see themselves as under attack by the police. The tragic shooting of Amadou Diallo has become a rallying point for general resentment about aggressive police stops and searches.
People are worried that they themselves -- and particularly their teen-age sons -- are at risk, but from cops. They are not feeling the benefit of safer streets.
Although we can't know for certain until all the facts are in, the Diallo shooting appears to have been an error committed by fallible human beings. It is beyond imagining that these officers gunned down an innocent man intentionally. The New York Police Department shows more restraint in the use of force than do Federal enforcement agencies and most other big-city police departments.
But all that is irrelevant to the current crisis of fear. People are often afraid of crime out of proportion to its reality, so it should not be surprising that they fear police abuse out of proportion to its reality.
The challenge for the city government and the Police Department is not to prove frightened people wrong. It is to make visible and effective changes that ease their fears and restore their confidence in the police. The department can combine several strategies to find a way out of this crisis of fear.
The first strategy is openness. A police organization that willfully shuts itself off from scrutiny and public exposure can lose public trust. The role of police power in a democracy should be the expression of social consensus.
But how can a consensus be reached if the Police Department, responding to orders from above, routinely withholds information from the state comptroller and the public advocate as well as from the press and public?
When I was New York City's Police Commissioner from 1994 to the spring of 1996, I tried to run an open department. But Mayor Rudolph Giuliani closed down this effort. He forbade "ride alongs," in which the public or press accompany patrolling police officers. He also dismantled the department's public information staff because its officials were too free with information, and he questioned the loyalty of anyone who didn't speak from a prepared script.
Things have gotten even worse. The concrete barriers around City Hall and Police Plaza that were erected last year send the wrong message. If you don't want your Police Department to appear as an occupying army, you shouldn't run the city from a fort.
The second strategy is outreach and recruitment in minority communities, so that the police will look more like the city they serve. It was one of my continuing frustrations as Police Commissioner that I could never get the money to start a youth career program that would have significantly increased the college-educated minority representation in the department.
I was drawn to policing at a very early age, and I believe that many minority youths could be, too, if the effort were made to interest them during their high school and post-high school years. The program would have begun with our existing summer youth academy for 12-to-14-year-olds and continued on through a proposed public safety high school and all the way to the City College system.
This would have fostered friendlier relationships between young people and the police. It would also have provided focus, direction and mentoring to teen-agers, while simultaneously giving the Police Department a stronger field of potential candidates to choose from.
Unfortunately, the idea was not allowed to go forward. Even an expansion of existing cadet programs, which were 70 percent minority, was stopped, despite the recommendations of the department and of experts at John Jay College.
The third strategy is imaginative police training. I believe that expanding the department at this time would be a mistake. Instead, resources should be used more wisely to raise the pay of the officers we have, to attract the best qualified new candidates and to create a "learning organization" that continuously and tirelessly trains them throughout their careers for the challenges and complexities they face on the streets.
The Police Academy must be given the resources to establish itself as a center of leading-edge ideas and reality-based training. It should put into practice many of the recommendations made by the panel on police-community relations appointed by the Mayor in 1997.
There is no more difficult challenge in a free society than the legitimate exercise of force.
There are thousands of police officers in the department who meet that challenge every day with extraordinary discretion, judgment and intelligence. It's up to the department and the city to support them with open lines of communication to the public, a genuine commitment to minority recruitment and the best and most sophisticated training.
New York City should not waste this opportunity -- and, yes, the current crisis should be viewed as an opportunity -- to face up to and resolve the issue of relations between the police and minority residents.
With crime down so dramatically, we have a chance to forge a lasting alliance in the communities that need the police the most.
Not only would such an alliance heal racial divisions in our city, it would also give New Yorkers more of what they want: continued success in reducing crime and a police force that is better woven into the fabric of city life.
William J. Bratton was New York City Police Commissioner from 1994 to 1996.
----------------
April 26, 2001
Panel Urges Retraining, Not Discipline,
for Diallo Officers
By KEVIN FLYNN
A preliminary report by Police
Department investigators has
concluded that the four officers
involved in the shooting death of
Amadou Diallo should not be
disciplined for the incident but
should be retrained in tactics,
according to officials who have
seen the report.
The investigative panel included several Bronx police
commanders and a police officer. It found that although the
officers had fired 41 times at an unarmed man, they had not
violated the department's guidelines because the officers
believed, however incorrectly, that Mr. Diallo had a gun and
they were acting out of bona fide concern for their lives. "In
their mind's eye, they perceived a very real danger, and under a
perceived combat situation, they behaved appropriately," said
one official, paraphrasing the report's conclusion.
The recommendation by the panel is one step in the
administrative process under which the department will decide
whether the officers deserve to be disciplined, or even fired,
for their actions in the Feb. 4, 1999, shooting in the vestibule of
Mr. Diallo's apartment building in the Soundview section of the
Bronx.
The report and its recommendations will be reviewed by a
second investigative panel and then forwarded to the police
commissioner, who will make the final decision on whether the
officers engaged in misconduct. Even though the report's
conclusions are preliminary, they are nonetheless significant
because, historically, the department has tended to go along
with the recommendations made by the original investigators.
The Bronx panel's report was forwarded yesterday to the chief
of department, Joseph J. Esposito, the department's third-
ranking official. Mr. Esposito will direct a second group of
senior police supervisors, known as the Firearms Discharge
Review Panel, in reviewing the facts. That panel's
recommendations will then be forwarded to First Deputy Police
Commissioner Joseph P. Dunne and Police Commissioner
Bernard B. Kerik, most likely within a few days.
"We are not going to comment because this is part of an ongoing
process," the commissioner's chief spokesman, Thomas
Antenen, the deputy commissioner for public information, said
yesterday.
Although the Bronx panel did not endorse discipline for the
officers, its recommendation for retraining is a clear indication
that the panel acknowledged the magnitude of the officers' error
in mistaking Mr. Diallo's wallet for a handgun. The officers
have said that initial mistake was part of a series of events,
including a fall by one of the officers, that created a
misperception that they were in a gunfight. Many critics,
however, have said the officers' negligence was so serious that
they should be dismissed.
Mr. Diallo's mother, Kadiatou, said she was disappointed by
the panel's conclusions, as relayed to her by a reporter.
"It is unbelievable that these people would say that it is within
the guidelines of the department that these officers acted," she
said. "They are trying to say about healing, they are trying to say
about police and community relations. I will tell you this. They
have to have the courage to denounce those who did wrong.
That's the only way they can heal this city and make the police
better."
Even if Mr. Kerik was to decide to keep the officers on the
force, it is unclear whether they would ever be assigned to
patrol duties again because of the potential liability the city
might face if they were involved in another shooting.
The four officers, Kenneth Boss, Sean Carroll, Edward
McMellon and Richard Murphy, were acquitted of criminal
charges at a state trial last year. Federal authorities decided
earlier this year not to pursue civil rights charges against them.
Since the shooting, they have been assigned to desk duty and
have had their guns and badges confiscated. On the night of the
shooting, the officers were assigned to the Street Crime Unit, a
plainclothes detail whose officers drive unmarked cars and
focus on catching violent criminals and seizing illegal guns.
Currently, they are each charged administratively with
"prohibited conduct," based on the original criminal charges of
murder and reckless endangerment. The administrative charges
can be amended or dropped as the investigation proceeds.
Investigators with Internal Affairs and the Bronx Investigation
Unit interviewed the four officers separately for a total of more
than seven hours on Friday. In evaluating the conduct of the
officers, they set out to answer such questions as whether the
officers properly identified themselves, or whether they
followed guidelines that outline the tactics they should use
during street encounters and the situations in which it is
permissible to fire their guns.
The Bronx panel's recommendation was submitted with an
eight- page report, with a series of additional documents,
including a sketch of the shooting scene, the injury reports filed
by the officers and an autopsy report on Mr. Diallo.
If Mr. Kerik decides that, contrary to the panel's
recommendation, there is evidence of misconduct by the
officers, the case would be referred to the department's in-house
prosecutor for a disciplinary trial. A decision at trial would be
rendered by an administrative law judge, and then that decision
would be forwarded to Mr. Kerik, who would make the
decision about any disciplinary action, officials said.
Two of the officers have already indicated an interest in leaving
the department to become firefighters, and they have taken the
Fire Department's test. One, Officer McMellon, has been
tentatively cleared for hiring by Fire Department officials
because of his high score on the firefighters exam, but they are
awaiting the outcome of the police disciplinary process before
making a final decision. The other, Officer Murphy, scored
significantly lower on the exam and would not be eligible to be
hired for several years.
--------
April 27, 2001
Police Dept. Rejects Punishment for Officers in
Diallo Shooting
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN
Police Commissioner Bernard B. Kerik
has decided not to discipline the four
officers who killed Amadou Diallo in a hail of
gunfire in the Bronx two years ago, but will
order them to undergo retraining in tactics,
high-ranking police officials said last night.
These officials said Mr. Kerik would
announce as early as today that he had
accepted recommendations by two
departmental investigating panels that found
that the officers, despite their barrage at an
unarmed man, had not violated police
guidelines because they believed that Mr.
Diallo had a gun and that their lives were in
imminent danger.
While the investigators did not endorse
punishment, the officials said the
recommendations for retraining were intended
as an acknowledgment that the officers had
committed serious errors in the confrontation.
Critics, however, have insisted that the
negligence was so grave that the officers
should have been dismissed.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the
officials said it was unclear when the officers,
who have been working at desk jobs without
badges or guns, would be retrained, or when, if ever, they might return
to full duty.
Two have applied to join the Fire Department, and officials voiced doubts
about
whether the men could ever resume normal police careers.
Even before Mr. Kerik's decision became known last night, the preliminary
findings
of the investigators who recommended retraining but no punishments for
the officers
were denounced by Mr. Diallo's mother, Kadiatou Diallo; by the Rev. Al
Sharpton,
who has organized demonstrations in the case; and by several politicians,
including
two of the four major Democratic candidates for mayor.
The officers — Kenneth Boss, Sean Carroll, Edward McMellon and Richard
Murphy — were acquitted of criminal charges last year in a trial that was
moved to
Albany after a finding that public anger and political passions in New
York City
made a fair trial impossible. The United States Justice Department decided
in
January that federal civil rights charges were unwarranted.
Thus, while civil lawsuits against the officers and the city are pending,
Mr. Kerik's
decision to drop departmental charges brings to an end all criminal and
administrative proceedings in a racially divisive case that has provoked
demonstrations and a citywide debate on aggressive police tactics and continues
to
reverberate in this year's nascent mayoral election campaign.
Mr. Diallo, a 22-year-old street vendor from West Africa, was killed in
the vestibule
of his Bronx apartment building on Feb. 4, 1999, when four officers in
plain clothes,
who said they thought he resembled a rape suspect, confronted him and fired
41
shots, hitting him 19 times. They said they thought he drew a gun, but
it turned out to
be a wallet.
The recommendation for retraining but no disciplinary action was made recently
by a
panel of Bronx police commanders, whose conclusions — that the officers
had fired
in a split-second reaction because they believed they were in deadly peril
— were
similar to those by the judge in the criminal trial and by federal officials
who decided
not to pursue civil rights charges.
The Bronx panel's report was forwarded on Wednesday to the department chief,
Joseph J. Esposito, who led a second group of senior officials, known as
the
Firearms Discharge Review Panel, in examining the case. Their recommendations,
coinciding with those of the first group, were sent to First Deputy Police
Commissioner Joseph P. Dunne and to Commissioner Kerik, who was said to
have
reached his decision late yesterday.
While that decision was yet to be made public, reaction yesterday to the
recommendations was swift and in some quarters vehement.
Citing reports that the officers would not face dismissal for what he called
an
unfathomable shooting, Fernando Ferrer, the Bronx borough president and
one of
the Democratic candidates for mayor, said: "Such a decision would send
a horrific
message. It would be taken as evidence by millions of New Yorkers that
the
N.Y.P.D. is incapable of policing itself, and would create an even wider
gulf
between the police and the community."
Another candidate, City Council Speaker Peter F. Vallone, said: "I find
it hard to
accept that the Diallo tragedy occurred within the department's guidelines,
as the
preliminary panel contends. If this were the case, then it confirms my
original claim
that the department needs to immediately overhaul officer training."
The city comptroller, Alan G. Hevesi, another Democrat running for mayor,
said the
recommendation against punishment "raises some serious questions about
whether
the outcome of the investigation is a foregone conclusion." The city's
public
advocate, Mark Green, the fourth major Democratic candidate, declined to
comment until the commissioner announced his decision.
Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who has generally supported the officers, said
that the
case had been "investigated by everybody" and that "the police officers
have been
found innocent." He said the department's conclusion "should not be a surprising
one
if people are guided by the facts and the truth rather than by their predetermined
prejudices."
Stephen Worth, the lawyer who represented the officers in seven hours of
questioning last week by the Bronx commanders and the Internal Affairs
Bureau,
declined to comment yesterday, as did the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association.
In Harlem, Kadiatou Diallo said the recommendation against punishing the
officers
was part of a pattern of politics in her son's death. "It is not about
real justice," she
said. "I am a mother. I have been polite. I have been reasonable, but I
am beyond
the limit. I have to express my feelings. For me, justification for what
these officers
have done is not possible."
In their lawsuit in State Supreme Court in the Bronx, the parents and the
estate of
Amadou Diallo are seeking $20 million in compensatory damages from the
city and
$41 million in punitive damages from the four officers.
The officers have all been assigned to administrative duties pending the
outcome of
the administrative charges. Officer Carroll has been working in the Aviation
Unit,
and Officer Boss in an Emergency Service Unit. Officers Murphy and McMellon
have been in a Harbor Unit, and both have applied to join the Fire Department.
Officer McMellon, because of a high score on the firefighters' exam, has
been
tentatively cleared for hiring, but fire officials have been awaiting the
outcome of the
police disciplinary process before making decisions.