February 28, 2000

The acquittal of four police officers in the vicious and inhumane murder of African immigrant Amadou Diallo on February 25th must be vigorously condemned, and exposed as a license for continued police terror in Black and poor communities across this country. Brother Diallo was only 22 years old, a native of Guinea, West Africa.

The Black Radical Congress calls on all BRC Local Organizing Committees, grassroots and community organizations, social justice organizations, unions and workers rights groups, the Black press and community and political activists world-wide to issue press statements, pass leaflets, speak-out, organize demonstrations, meetings and actions to condemn and expose the unjust acquittals. We should join and/or send letters of support for the ongoing demonstrations occurring at this moment in New York to protest the unjust verdict.

The Diallo murder and the acquittal of the four officers who shot more than 40 times at Brother Diallo, massacring him with 19 bullets, demonstrates to the world community that Black life, poor life, and the innocent are worthless and expendable in U.S. society.

Racist police terror against the Black community has clearly been on the rise in the last decades of the 20th century and ominously pushes these historic acts of state condoned racist violence and terror against our community into the 21st century.

The conditions of oppression and the historic and systemic injustices facing the African American people, forces us to see that only an organized political movement for liberation can end the brutality of the so-called judicial system, the courts, and U.S. society in general.

Court testimony placed in the record by the prosecutors of the four officers suggested a police cover- up, in that Diallo next door neighbor Ida Vincent testified overhearing statements below her window just after hearing the gun shots saying, "Ok, Ok. We're just going to say this." Moreover, there was also testimony that the young immigrant may have been shot while lying on the ground. This according to New York City medical examiner Dr. Joseph Cohen, who performed the autopsy and who testified in the trial. Defense attorneys for the officers provided "expert" testimony against the medical examiners findings.

The Diallo murder must be placed in the context of the wider struggle in the United States against all forms of racist acts of violence and police state terror. In Los Angeles, as the Diallo Case was being tried, more than 70 current and former police officers have been placed under investigation for corruption in which it has been exposed that a conspiracy exists within the LAPD for planting evidence, shooting unarmed and innocent people, wrongful convictions, drug trafficking, and police cover-ups. One of the officers being investigated, Rafael Perez, testified in the investigation that "officers in the department's Rampart Division actually gave each other awards after being involved in shooting unarmed and innocent people."

Recently, the state of Illinois imposed a moratorium on the state's death penalty after it was revealed that 13 prisoners condemned to death and facing execution were actually innocent. Mumia Abu Jamal remains incarcerated and facing death as a result of the U.S. system of injustice.

Millions of Black and other people of color and the poor languish in the jails and prisons across America while the innocent are harassed, beaten, and murdered on the streets. We must build a national fight back and a national movement to stem the tide of brutality against our communities.

Back to top of page