Word: diallo
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While discussions of race have been aggressively squelched in the courtroom, the troubled legacies of Rodney King and Abner Louima haunt the trial of four white New York City police officers accused of murdering African trinket salesman Amadou Diallo. The police say they mistook Diallo's black wallet, which he apparently proffered in an outstretched hand, for a gun, and believing their lives were in danger, the police fired their weapons 41 times...
...February 1999 shooting sparked heated, celebrity-studded protests and calls for the resignation of New York police commissioner Howard Safir. Get-tough anti-crime methods were under fire and under the microscope; years of mounting tension between cops and minorities came to a head after Diallo's killing - and loud factions demanded action and answers...
...prosecution's effort wound down, there was a general consensus that all four cops were trapped by evidence that implicated them in the most damning way possible: Gunshots that traveled up Diallo's leg, indicating he was prone when some of the shots were fired; the sheer number of bullets discharged by the police; and an earwitness's testimony that there was a pause in the shooting, suggesting the cops may have had a moment to think before they continued firing. By the time the first cop took the stand, the defense had their work cut out for them...
...force. The NYPD, for example, recently saw the p.r. efforts that followed the Abner Louima torture case nullified, first when Mayor Giuliani discarded a task force report that called for departmental overhaul and now with the trial of the cops who fired more than 40 bullets into unarmed Amadou Diallo. Mention of the Chicago Police Department, despite the absence of recent major scandals, still evokes images of protesters brutalized and hosed down by rampaging police outside the 1968 Democratic convention. But no American police department has been as criticized - or feared - as that of Los Angeles. The LAPD hadn...
...stand next week; each is charged with two counts of second-degree murder and one count of reckless endangerment. Everything hinges on their testimony, says White. "The verdict will depend on the story they tell," he says. "They'll have to explain to the jury why they stopped Diallo, why they felt threatened, why they continued to shoot as much as they did, and whether they stopped when he was down. They're going to have to tell a tale the jury can hook on to." As they gear up for the moment of truth, the officers...