Amadou Diallo, a black immigrant from Guinea, was standing on his apartment building stoop in the Bronx, shortly after midnight, when he was confronted by four NYPD police officers of the Street Crime Unit (SCU). As Diallo reached for his wallet to present identification, the officers indiscriminately fired at him 41 times, of which 19 bullets struck and ravaged his body. His death sparked a nationwide outrage over police brutality, racial profiling, and the phenomenon of “Contagious Fire”.
The following year, in 2000, a predominantly white jury acquitted the police officers of all charges, including manslaughter and homicide. In a country with a sordid history of apartheid and racial violence, it warrants reflection and logical supposition: What might the judicial outcome have been if the roles were reversed – if an unarmed white man had been shot and killed unprovoked by four Black officers under similar circumstances?
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