Killing of Amadou Diallo

Encyclopedia

In the early hours of February 4, 1999, an unarmed 23-year-old Guinean immigrant named Amadou Diallo (born September 2, 1975) was 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.

The four officers, who were part of the now-defunct Street Crime Unit, were charged with second-degree murder and acquitted at trial in Albany, New York. A firestorm of controversy erupted after the event, as the circumstances of the shooting prompted outrage both inside and outside of New York City. 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., officers Edward McMellon, Sean Carroll, Kenneth Boss and Richard Murphy were looking for an alleged serial rapist in the Soundview section of the Bronx. While driving down Wheeler Avenue, the police officer stopped his unidentified car and interrogated Diallo, who was in front of his apartment. When they ordered Diallo to show his hands, he supposedly ran into the apartment and reached into his pocket to show his wallet. Soon afterwards, assuming Diallo was drawing a gun, the four officers fired 41 shots with semi-automatic pistols, hitting Diallo 19 times, fatally wounding him. Eyewitness Sherrie Elliott stated that the police continued to shoot even though Diallo was already down.

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 (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, a court ordered a change of venue to Albany, New York because of pretrial publicity. On February 25, 2000, after three days of deliberation, a jury composed of four black and eight white jurors acquitted the officers of all charges.

Aftermath

In April 2000, Diallo’s mother and father filed a $61 million 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 financial 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 others for telling a meeting of police sergeants that although the shooting had been a tragedy, the officers had been “over-indicted”.

Boss, one of the four officers implicated, had shot another 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. He retired from policework in 2019.

A report from Capital New York reported that 85 IP addresses belonging to the New York Police Department had made changes to Wikipedia pages about NYPD misconduct and also to articles about people killed in police interventions, including this article. One of these editions stated that “Officer Kenneth Boss had previously been involved in an incident in which an unarmed man was shot, but continued to work as a police officer” and was changed to “Officer Kenneth Boss was previously involved in an incident in which a man armed was shot.” Two policemen associated with these edits were reported to receive only “minor reprimands”.

In April 2021, Diallo’s mother was interviewed about her reaction to the conviction of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd.

Cultural references to Diallo

Music

  • Mentioned in the song ‘Senegal’ by Akon.
  • The music of rapper 88-Keys;
  • Bruce Springsteen’s song “American Skin (41 Shots)”;
  • “Diallo” by Wyclef Jean;
  • “New York City Cops” off The Strokes’ debut album Is This It had the incident as the inspiration. Singer Julian Casablancas revealed that this was a political song influenced by the shooting of Amadou Diallo in a March 2018 Vulture interview.
  • “I Find It Hard to Say (Rebel)” by Lauryn Hill;
  • “Lament for the Late AD” by Terry Callier.
  • The Public Enemy album There’s a Poison Goin’ On features a song titled “41:19” based on the number of rounds fired at and striking Diallo and contains lyrics concerning police harassment and violence.
  • The song “W.O.L.V.E.S.” by Krumbsnatcha and M.O.P., which appeared on the soundtrack for the 2001 film Training Day (“What happened to Diallo was a muthafuckin’ shame”).
  • Electro pop band Le Tigre 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.
  • In his song “The Other White Meat”, which deals with police brutality and racism, New York rapper Immortal Technique tells the police “I got 41 reasons to tell you to suck a dick” and “Guns don’t look like wallets”, clearly referencing the shooting and counting every bullet fired as a reason.
  • The incident was briefly mentioned by rapper Heems in his song “WOYY”: “Diallo got shot when he said the block was hot.”
  • The piece “Amadou Diallo”, included in the album Ethnic Stew and Brew by jazz trumpeter Roy Campbell, Jr., was inspired by the shooting, ending with a rapid burst of notes replicating the 41 gunshots.
  • The incident also served as the basis for Erykah Badu’s track “A.D. 2000” (the abbreviation standing for Diallo’s initials), from the album Mama’s Gun. Rather than singing a condemnation of the NYPD, as had most other artists who were incensed by the event, Badu chose to sing an elegy which, while noting the tragedy of Diallo’s killing, also observes the furor over the circumstances, which she viewed as likely to be temporary: “No you won’t be namin’ no buildings after me/To go down dilapidated ooh/No you won’t be namin’ no buildings after me/My name will be misstated, surely”.
  • In his album The Beautiful Struggle, Talib Kweli speaks of “Brother Amadou as a modern day martyr.” Kweli makes further reference to the shooting in his song “The Proud”: “It’s in they job description to terminate the threat/So 41 shots to the body is what he can expect”.
  • The underground rap artist Milo referenced Amadou quoting, “Surrounded by Anglos in Almelo, thinkin ’bout Amadou Diallo”
  • The metal band Trivium wrote the song Contempt Breeds Contamination from their third album The Crusade about Diallo’s death.
  • Emawk has a song titled “Amadou.jpg” on his EP “Ifievercantmakeit.Jpg”

Film

  • In 2000, a group of human rights organizations completed The Day After Diallo, a short video about police violence against people of color in the context of the killing of Amadou Diallo. The video was co-produced by WITNESS, New York City PoliceWatch and The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights.
  • In the 2002 film Phone Booth, the caller (voiced by Kiefer Sutherland) warns the main character Stu (played by Colin Farrell) not to move, telling him “you can get shot 41 times just for pulling out your wallet”.

Visual arts

  • A drawing by Art Spiegelman showing a police officer at a shooting gallery with a banner reading “41 shots 10¢” was featured on the cover of The New Yorker on March 8, 1999. 250 police officers picketed the magazine’s headquarters in response.