In the early hours of February 4, 1999, an unarmed 23-year-old Guinean student named Amadou Diallo (born September 2, 1975) was fired upon with 41 rounds and shot a total of 19 times by four New York City Police Department plainclothes officers: Sean Carroll, Richard Murphy, Edward McMellon, and Kenneth Boss. Carroll later claimed to have mistaken Diallo for a rape suspect from one year earlier. The four officers, who were part of the Street Crime Unit, which had expanded in size under mayor Rudy Giuliani, 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 within and beyond New York City. Issues such as police brutality, racial profiling, and contagious shooting were central to the ensuing controversy.

Early life

Diallo was one of four children born to Saikou and Kadiatou 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 of residence after returning from a meal. At about 12:40 a.m., officers Edward McMellon, Sean Carroll, Kenneth Boss, and Richard Murphy were looking for a serial rapist in the Soundview section of the Bronx. While driving down Wheeler Avenue, the police officers observed Diallo standing in front of his building entrance looking up and down the street. They stopped their unmarked car intending to question Diallo. When they ordered Diallo to show his hands, he ran up into the building entrance and reached into his pocket to produce what turned out to be his wallet. Assuming Diallo was drawing a firearm, one officer fired as he was walking up the stairs. The recoil of the gun caused the officer to fall backwards. The other three officers, believing their partner was shot, fired their weapons. 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 switching away from 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

The killing prompted an outpouring of protest, culminating in 1,200 arrests of protesters in New York City, as well as Rep. John Lewis and Rev. Al Sharpton becoming involved. The head of the NAACP urged the United States Attorney General to take action. In March 2000, the United States Department of Justice found that the NYPD Street Crimes Unit, to which the 4 officers belonged, engaged in racial profiling. 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 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 against 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". Officer Kenneth Boss had previously been involved in an incident in which an unarmed black man was shot. After the trial, Boss was reassigned to desk duty, but in October 2012, Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly restored Boss's 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 with state civil service law, which is not subject to review by top department officials. The next year, he was named "sergeant of the year" by his union. He retired from law enforcement 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 edits changed the statement "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" 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. She said it was hard to tell if a corner had been turned in police accountability but it was "a right step in the right direction."

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