If so, then they either were insulated from or simply failed to consider the historical fact of minority victimization at the hands of the police. Anthony Baez, strangled in a choke hold by arresting officers. There is a remedy for this official violence against the citizens of New York City. The city must properly screen and train officers before they are sent out onto the streets of the city, and properly supervise them once they are deployed. The city must insist that all officers be residents of, at the very least, the city in which they work.
Police occupy positions of extraordinary trust and power in our society.
The killing of Amadou Diallo was gross abuse of that power. There are serious issues of police brutality, unchecked use of deadly force, institutional racism, and indifference to the sanctity of human life in the New York City Police Department. Those issues must be addressed and corrected, and the corrections must begin immediately. Our sympathies are with the family of Amadou Diallo, who must live with the pain of their son being killed and the pain of justice denied. That they may now pursue a federal remedy for the violation of their son's civil rights is small comfort to them or to future victims.