By Michelle Han
Queens' black community expressed anger and sadness after four white officers were found not guilty of murder in the Amadou Diallo trial, but the borough remained quiet as both black and white leaders called for reform in the Police Department.
The verdict freed four members of the elite Street Crime Unit of any guilt in the shooting death of the unarmed West African immigrant as he stood in front of his Bronx apartment building last February.
The verdict, which was reached shortly before 5 p.m. Friday, galvanized the borough's black community against Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, whom they blamed for creating an atmosphere of hostility in the city's Police Department toward blacks and black neighborhoods.
The Rev. Charles Norris, executive secretary of the Southeast Queens Clergy for Community Empowerment, called the verdict a “miscarriage of justice” that began when the justice system allowed the trial to be moved out of the Bronx to Albany because of pretrial publicity.
“What that says is that there are two kinds of justice – one for black people and one for white people,” Norris said in an interview.
Giuliani, in a news conference after the verdict Friday, extended sympathy to Diallo's parents as well as the families of the four officers in the case. He said the verdict was a fair assessment of the officers' actions.
“Any fair-minded observer of the trial in Albany would have to say it was an immensely fair trial,” the mayor said.
While the trial itself did not address race as a factor in the shooting, the incident appears to have deepened the rift between the Police Department and the black neighborhoods it serves..
The four officers, including Richard Murphy of Fresh Meadows, testified during the trial that they had fired on Diallo, who was black, because they believed a wallet he was reaching for was a gun. As members of the Street Crime Unit, the officers were not in uniform, but they testified that they identified themselves as police. Some prosecution witnesses told the jury they did not hear the officers identify themselves before they approached Diallo.
Members of the Flushing branch of the NAACP said the verdict essentially condoned an atmosphere of “racial profiling” in which officers stop and question people based on their race.
The Flushing branch is “confused, saddened, and distressed” by the verdict, its president Kenneth Cohen said in a statement.
“Injustice…has always been a way of life that people of color have come to live with in the judicial system,” Cohen said. “It is time to make a change in our system.”
The call for change was repeated numerous times by elected officials and community activists alike in Queens.
Borough President Claire Shulman in a statement Monday urged greater supervision and better training methods in the NYPD. She also called for construction of a law enforcement high school near the Baisley Park Housing Authority to be expedited.
U.S. Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-St. Albans), who said his office has been flooded with angry and tearful calls from constituents over the verdict, said he would lead the effort for a thorough investigation of police practices and policy.
City Council Speaker Peter Vallone (D-Astoria), a frequent critic of Giuliani and a potential mayoral candidate in 2001, renewed a call for “lasting reform” and “permanent change within the NYPD.”
But the outcome of the trial, said Rochdale Village Civic Association President Clifton Stanley Diaz, proved there is still little accountability for police officers whose actions could cost residents their lives.
“How did they just get off, scot-free, cleared, with nothing? Like it never happened?” he said in an interview. “For them to say it was a tragedy, not a crime – it was a crime.”
Despite the apparent calm that enveloped Queens in the days after the Feb. 25 verdict, some said the Diallo incident dominated conversations at private gatherings in churches and homes.
Norris, of the Southeast Queens Clergy group, said the subject was discussed by those who attended a funeral service for the late Supreme Court Judge Kenneth Browne – the first black man appointed to State Supreme Court – at Jamaica's J. Foster Phillips Funeral Home this weekend.
There were also pockets of supporters for the mayor and the NYPD in Queens.
In southern Queens, members of the Richmond Hill Block Association stood squarely behind New York City police officers and blamed the news media for inciting anger in the community through excessive coverage of the Diallo story.
“This freedom of the press, it's really too much,” one woman told another at a meeting of the block association.
City Councilman Thomas Ognibene (R-Middle Village), an ally of Giuliani's, said at the meeting that the number of shots fired at Diallo – 41 – was reasonable, considering the circumstances.
“This all happened in an instant, in seconds,” he said.
Acknowledging that Diallo was an innocent man, Ognibene said the tragic shooting probably had more to do with what he described as Diallo's “fleeing” rather than the four police officers' actions. He said the police might have believed Diallo was a robber trying to break in to the Bronx apartment building because they thought he was acting suspiciously.
“Their job, which is what we pay them for, is to seize that man before he gets in the building,” Ognibene said.
But it is just that kind of thinking that needs to be changed among members of the police force in predominantly black neighborhoods, some said.
Norris said the city should require that all its officers are residents of the five boroughs, a suggestion supported by the borough president. Two of the officers charged in the shooting – Sean Carroll and Kenneth Boss – live in Suffolk County on Long Island. It was not known where Edward McMellon lives. The fourth officer is a Fresh Meadows resident.
