1. AMADOU DIALLO SHOOTING:
GUNNED DOWN BY NEW YORK POLICE LIKE A DOG!
CUT and PASTED FROM: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amadou_Diallo_shooting
Amadou Diallo
Born
September 2, 1975
Sinoe County, Liberia
Died
February 4, 1999 (aged 23)
New York City, New York, U.S.
Nationality Guinea
Amadou Bailo Diallo (September 2, 1975 – February 4, 1999) was a 23-year-old immigrant from
Guinea who was shot and killed in New York City on February 4, 1999 by four New York City
Police Department plain-clothed officers: Sean Carroll, Richard Murphy, Edward McMellon and
Kenneth Boss, who fired a combined total of 41 shots, 19 of which struck
Diallo, outside his apartment at 1157 Wheeler Avenue in the Soundview section of The Bronx. The
four were part of the now-defunct Street Crimes Unit. All four officers were acquitted at trial in Albany,
New York.[1]
Diallo was unarmed at the time of the shooting, and a firestorm of controversy
erupted subsequent to the event as the circumstances of the shooting prompted outrage both within and
outside New York City. Issues such as police brutality, racial profiling, and contagious shooting were
central to the ensuing controversy.

2. Contents
 1 Biography
 2 Events surrounding death
 3 Aftermath
 4 Cultural references to Diallo
 5 See also
o 5.1 Similar cases
 6 References
 7 External links
Biography
One of four children of Saikou and Kadiatou Diallo, Amadou's family is part of an old Fulbe trading
family in Guinea. He was born in Sinoe County, Liberia, while his father was working there,
and grew up following his family to Togo, Bangkok, and Singapore, attending schools in Thailand,
and later in Guinea and London, including Microsoft's Asian Institute. In September 1996, he came
to New York City where other family members had immigrated. He and a cousin started a business.
He had reportedly come to New York City to study but had not enrolled in any school. He sought to
remain in the United States by filing an application for political asylum under false pretenses.[2]
He sold
videotapes, gloves and socks from the sidewalk along 14th Street during the day and studied in the
evenings.
Events surrounding death
In the early morning of February 4, 1999, Diallo was standing near his building after returning from a
meal. Police officers Edward McMellon, Sean Carroll, Kenneth Boss and Richard Murphy passed by in
a Ford Taurus. Observing that Diallo matched the description of a since-captured well-armed serial
rapist involved in the rape or attempted rape of 51 victims, they approached him.[3][4]
The officers
were in plain clothes.
The officers claimed they loudly identified themselves as NYPD officers and that Diallo ran up the
outside steps toward his apartment house doorway at their approach, ignoring their orders to stop and
"show his hands". The porch lightbulb was out and Diallo was backlit by the inside vestibule light,
showing only a silhouette. Diallo then reached into his jacket and withdrew his wallet. Seeing the
suspect holding a small square object, Carroll yelled "Gun!" to alert his colleagues.
Mistakenly believing Diallo had aimed a gun at them at close range, the officers opened
fire on Diallo. During the shooting, lead officer McMellon tripped backward off the front
stairs, causing the other officers to believe he had been shot. The four officers
fired 41 shots, more than half of which went astray as Diallo was hit 19
times.[1]
The post-shooting investigation found no weapons on Diallo's body; the item
he had pulled out of his jacket was not a gun, but a rectangular black wallet. The internal NYPD
investigation ruled the officers had acted within policy, based on what a reasonable police officer would
have done in the same circumstances with the information they had. The Diallo shooting led to a review
of police training policy and the use of full metal jacket (FMJ) bullets. On March 25, 1999 a
Bronx grand jury indicted the four officers on charges of second-degree
murder and reckless endangerment. On December 16, an appellate court ordered a

3. change of venue to Albany, New York, stating that pretrial publicity had made a fair trial in New York
City impossible. On February 25, 2000, after two days of deliberation, a mixed-race jury in Albany
acquitted the officers of all charges. Officer Kenneth Boss had been previously involved in
an incident where an unarmed man was shot, but remained working as a police
officer. A 22-year-old man, Patrick Bailey, died after Boss shot him on October 31, 1997.[5]
As of 2012
Boss is the only remaining officer working for the NYPD, performing duties such as making repairs at
Floyd Bennett Field and participating in police drills and exercises.[6]
In October 2012,
Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly restored Boss' ability to carry a firearm against
the protests of Diallo's family.[7]
Aftermath
Diallo's death, the change of venue, and the verdict each sparked massive demonstrations against police
brutality and racial profiling, resulting in more than 1,700 arrests over the course of many weeks. Those
arrested in the daily protests at the entrance of One Police Plaza included former NYPD officers, former
mayor David Dinkins, Congressmen Charlie Rangel and Gregory Meeks, Rev. Al Sharpton, Rev. Jesse
Jackson, New York State Assemblyman Ruben Diaz Jr., activist actress Susan Sarandon, more than a
dozen rabbis and other clergy, and numerous federal, state, and local politicians. Charges against the
protesters were later dropped.
In 2001, the Justice Department announced it would not charge the officers with a
violation of Diallo's civil rights. In the vestibule where Diallo died, neighbors created a shrine of
letters, teddy bears, and other items. Within several weeks, there was a severe rain period and the
landlord of the building put all the items in the garbage. A neighbor, Jimmy Spice Curry, rescued the
items, storing them until he was able to contact Eugene Adams of Bronx Community College, who was
given the items to donate to Diallo's mother.[citation needed]
On April 18, 2000, Diallo's mother, Kadiatou, and his stepfather, Sankarella Diallo, filed a
US$61,000,000 ($20m plus $1m for each shot fired) lawsuit against the City of New York and the
officers, charging gross negligence, wrongful death, racial profiling, and other violations of Diallo's civil
rights. In March 2004, they accepted a US$3,000,000 settlement. The much lower final settlement was
still reportedly one of the largest in the City of New York for a single man with no dependents under
New York State's "wrongful death law", which limits damages to pecuniary loss by the decedent's next
of kin.[8]
Anthony H. Gair, lead counsel for the Diallo family, argued that Federal common law should apply,
pursuant to Section 1983 of the civil rights act. In April 2002, as a result of the killing of Diallo and
other controversial actions, the Street Crime Unit was disbanded. In 2003, Diallo's mother, Kadiatou
Diallo, published a memoir, My Heart Will Cross This Ocean: My Story, My Son, Amadou (ISBN 0-345-
45600-9), with the help of author Craig Wolff. Diallo's death became an issue in the 2005 mayoral
election in New York City. Bronx borough president, and mayoral candidate, Fernando Ferrer, who had
protested the circumstances of the killing at the time, later told a meeting of police sergeants that
although the shooting had certainly been a tragedy, there was subsequently a move to "over-indict" the
officers involved, which led to criticism of Ferrer by the Diallo family and many others following the
case.[9]
The event spurred subsequent social psychology research. A number of experiments have conducted
with both undergraduate volunteers and police officers playing a computer game where they must
choose whether to shoot or not to shoot a target who may be white or black, on the basis of whether or
not they are armed. Such studies find that participants made slower and less accurate decisions on
whether to shoot an unarmed black target than an unarmed white target, and were quicker and more
likely to correctly decide to shoot an armed black target than an armed white target. Both black and

4. white participants respond in this manner. No correlations have been found between participant's
indicated levels of racial bias, and their performance in the games.[10]
Amadou Diallo is buried in the village of Hollande Bourou in the Fouta Djallon
region of Guinea, West Africa, where his extended family resides.
Cultural references to Diallo
The Diallo shooting has been referenced in the music of 88 Keys,[11]
Bruce Springsteen's song
"American Skin (41 Shots)",[12]
the Ziggy Marley song "I Know You Don't Care About Me", the
Trivium song "Contempt Breeds Contamination", The Spooks song "Things I've seen", the song "What
Would You do?" by Paris, the Blitz the Ambassador song "Uhuru", the song "Diallo" by Wyclef Jean,[13]
and the song "Lament For The Late AD" by Terry Callier.[14]
Electro pop band Le Tigre, formed by
Kathleen Hanna (formerly of Bikini Kill), lamented the Diallo shooting in their song "Bang! Bang!",
which ends with a vocal chorus counting numbers that ends with 41, the number of shots fired.[15]
In his
song "The other white meat", which deals with police brutality and racism, the New York rapper
Immortal Technique tells the Police "I got 41 reasons to tell you to suck ..." and "Guns don't look like
wallets". Clearly referencing the shooting and counting every bullet fired as a reason.[16]
It was also
referenced in the song, "So You Wanna Be a Cop" by the Crack Rocksteady 7, in the lyric: "and after 41
shots, you're grinning in the donut shop".
See also
Biography portal
 Blink (book)
 Civil rights
 Police brutality
 List of killings by law enforcement officers in the United States
 Racial profiling
 American Skin (41 Shots)
Similar cases
 Sean Bell shooting incident
 Patrick Dorismond
 Johnny Gammage
 Rodney King
 Abner Louima
 Ousmane Zongo
 Jean Charles de Menezes
 BART Police shooting of Oscar Grant
 Mark Duggan
References
1. ^ Jump up to: a b
Medaglia, Angelica. "Amadou Diallo". The New York Times. Retrieved 2011-
03-28.
2. Jump up ^ Waldman, Amy (Marcy 17, 1999). "His Lawyer Says Diallo Lied on Request for
Political Asylum". The New York Times. Retrieved 2011-03-28.

5. 3. Jump up ^ Bob Kappstatter, Rafael A. Olmeda, Dave Goldiner (April 8, 1999). "Bronx Suspect
Confesses To 5-year Rape Spree". Daily News.
4. Jump up ^ Forero, Juan (August 2, 2000). "Serial Rapist Gets 155 Years; Judge Suggests His
Crimes Contributed to Diallo Shooting". The New York Times.
5. Jump up ^ Goodman, Amy; González, Juan (February 14, 2000). "One of Four Police Officers
on Trial for the Murder of Amadou Diallo Killed Before". Democracy Now!
6. Jump up ^ Blau, Reuven; Hamilton, Brad (March 20, 2011). "Outcast cops still rake it in". New
York Post.
7. Jump up ^ Ruderman, Wendy; Goodman, J. David (October 2, 2012). "Diallo's Mother Asks
Why Officer Who Shot at Her Son Will Get Gun Back". The New York Times.
8. Jump up ^ Moses, Ray. "Opening Statements: The Amadou Diallo Killing". Center for
Criminal Justice Advocacy. Retrieved December 11, 2012.
9. Jump up ^ Cardwell, Diane (March 18, 2005). "For Ferrer and the Police, a Shifting
Relationship". The New York Times.
10. Jump up ^ Borgida Eugene; Fiske; Susan T. (2007). Beyond Common Sense: Psychological
Science in the Courtroom. p. 7. ISBN 1-4051-4573-0.
11. Jump up ^ "Hip Hop For Respect EP", A Tree Never Grown, Verse 1
12. Jump up ^ Susman, Gary (April 23, 2003). "American Skin". Entertainment Weekly.
13. Jump up ^ Thompson, Ed (October 12, 2006). "Trivium - The Crusade: Trivium - The
Crusade". IGN.
14. Jump up ^ Benson, Denise. "Terry Callier Alive". exclaim.ca. Retrieved July 14, 2013
15. Jump up ^ Nelson, Chris (April 2, 2001). "Springsteen, Public Enemy, Le Tigre Fire Back At
Diallo Shooting". MTV. Retrieved July 14, 2013.
16. Jump up ^ rapgenius.com "Immortal Technique – The Other White Meat Lyrics". Retrieved
July 18, 2013.
External links
 "Diallo Remembered in Guinea"
 Ted Conover. Kadi Diallo's Trial
 Susan Sachs. Slain Man's Mother Is Center of Attention in Guinea
 "Amadou Diallo shooting". Find a Grave. Retrieved August 9, 2010.
 Amadou Diallo Foundation