Shooting of Amadou Diallo


In the early hours of February 4, 1999, a 23-year-old Guinean immigrant named Amadou Diallo was fatally shot by four New York City Police Department plainclothes officers: Sean Carroll, Richard Murphy, Edward McMellon, and Kenneth Boss. Carroll would later claim to have mistaken him for a rape suspect from one year earlier, a claim never confirmed by objective evidence. The officers fired a 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 officers, who were part of the now-defunct Street Crimes Unit, were charged with second-degree murder and acquitted at trial in Albany, New York. Diallo was unarmed and a firestorm of controversy erupted after the event, as the circumstances of the shooting prompted outrage both inside and outside of New York. Issues such as police brutality, racial profiling, and contagious shooting were central to the ensuing controversy.

Early life

Amadou Diallo was one of four children born to Saikou and Kadijatou Diallo, and part of a historic Fulbe trading family in Guinea. He was born in Sinoe County in Liberia on September 2, 1975, while his father was working there, and while growing up followed his family to Togo, Singapore, Thailand, and back to Guinea. In September 1996, he followed other family members to New York City and started a business with a cousin. According to his family's lawyer he sought to remain in the United States by filing a political asylum application falsely claiming that he was from Mauritania and that his parents had been killed in fighting. He sold video cassettes, gloves, and socks on the sidewalk along 14th Street during the day.

Death

In the early morning of February 4, 1999, Diallo was standing near his building after returning from a meal. At about 12:40 a.m., police officers Edward McMellon, Sean Carroll, Kenneth Boss and Richard Murphyall in plain clothesdrove by. Carroll later claimed that Diallo matched the general description of a serial rapist reported a year earlier, or that he might have been a "lookout".
The officers later claimed that,
However, a witness testified that they shot with no warning.
The four officers fired 41 shots with semi-automatic pistols, striking Diallo 19 times.
The investigation found no weapons on or near Diallo; what he had pulled out of his jacket was a wallet. The internal NYPD investigation ruled that the officers had acted within policy, based on what a reasonable police officer would have done in the same circumstances. Nonetheless the Diallo shooting led to a review of police training policy and of the use of full metal jacket 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, a court ordered a change of venue to Albany, New York because of pretrial publicity. On February 25, 2000, after two days of deliberation, a jury in Albany acquitted the officers of all charges.

Aftermath

In April 2000, Diallo's mother and father filed a $61million lawsuit against the city and the officers, charging gross negligence, wrongful death, racial profiling, and other violations of Diallo's civil rights. In March 2004, they accepted a $3 million settlement, 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 deceased person's next of kin.
Anthony H. Gair, representing the Diallo family, argued that federal common law should apply.
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 published a memoir, My Heart Will Cross This Ocean: My Story, My Son, Amadou, with the help of author Craig Wolff.
Diallo's death became an issue in the 2005 New York City mayoral election. Bronx borough president and mayoral candidate Fernando Ferrer, who had protested the circumstances of the killing at the time, was criticized by the Diallo family and many other for telling a meeting of police sergeants that although the shooting had been a tragedy, the officers had been "over-indicted".
Boss had shot another unarmed black man dead in 1997. After the trial Boss was reassigned to desk duty, but in October 2012, Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly restored Boss' ability to carry a firearm. As of 2012 he was the only one of the four officers still working for the NYPD. In 2015 he was promoted to sergeant in accordance to police policy, which is not subject to review by top department officials.

Cultural references to Diallo

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