Word: soundview
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...home for Amadou Diallo was an apartment in the Soundview section of the Bronx. It was just after midnight, a time when the city's elite Street Crime Unit could often be seen patrolling the poorest neighborhoods. The SCU's motto said as much: We Own the Night. The unit had been expanded, perhaps too quickly, from 150 undercover officers to nearly 400. Recruits were given only three days of intensive training. The unit belonged to no precinct and was based on one of the islets in the East River, isolated from every borough but having the freedom...
That likely will not play well in the Soundview section of the Bronx, where, White says, "the entire black community is vibrating like a plucked string." On Friday and throughout the weekend, anguished crowds gathered into the evening on the block where Diallo was gunned down, some standing silently with candles, others incoherent in their anger. "My son could end up as the next Amadou Diallo," one young father cried...
Ironically, the sense of unease between the police and the citizens of Soundview that was so evident Friday night and so much a characteristic of that community did not much permeate the proceedings inside the courtroom. That, White says, presented a serious problem for the prosecution. Judge Joseph Teresi's strict guidelines and businesslike pace kept the district attorney's office from presenting evidence explicating the dynamic between the street crime unit and the citizens they were charged with protecting - a discussion that might have touched on the racially charged aspects of this case. "We can say with a great...