10 years ago today, NYPD put 19 bullets into unarmed Amadou Diallo
19 bullets. 19 bullets. 19 bullets.
The officers — Kenneth Boss, Sean Carroll, Edward McMellon and Richard Murphy — acknowledged firing 41 shots that night, but said they thought that Mr. Diallo was carrying a gun. Mr. Diallo, who came to America more than two years before from Guinea and worked as a street peddler in Manhattan, was hit by 19 bullets while standing in the doorway of his Bronx apartment building.
The case set off massive protests across the city, and became a flashpoint for heightened frictions between minority leaders and the administration of Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani.
All four officers, who were in plainclothes, said they approached Mr. Diallo because they thought he fit the description of a man wanted in a rape case. They contended that when he pulled out his wallet to show identification they mistook it for a gun.
The officers faced prosecution on second-degree murder and other charges but were acquitted by a jury in Albany, where the trial had been moved because of concerns over pretrial publicity.
Guiliani predictably defended the NYPD, instead of standing for Diallo’s right to live safely in New York City. Bruce Springsteen wrote a song, American Skin [41 Shots]—and he was called a dirtbag by a police union.
Even if he had been the rapist they were ‘looking for’, 19 bullets is murder.
Amadou Diallo was not the rapist they were looking for, but he paid for the cops’ mistake with his life.
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