Forty-One Shots, Twenty Years Later: A Critical Reexamination
Abstract:
On February 4, 1999, four white police officers from the NYPD’s Street Crimes Unit shot and killed Amadou Diallo, an unarmed black man, in the vestibule of his Bronx apartment building. The scholarly response to Diallo’s death encompasses two divergent perspectives—the first maintaining that the incident constituted a tragic, isolated accident that did not reflect a larger pattern of racial profiling and the use of excessive force by the NYPD and the second contending that the shooting was the direct result of aggressive, confrontational, and racially-biased policing strategies implemented under Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s administration—with each camp failing to substantively engage the other. This project critically examines both approaches, analyzes additional primary and secondary sources, and extends the timeline under review thereby offering a more comprehensive treatment of the subject matter, situating the incident in the NYPD’s broader history, and establishing stronger connections to shifts in the Department’s policing strategies. Shedding further light on the complex interactions between race and policing in the contemporary era, this project concludes that the circumstances surrounding the Diallo shooting reveal systemic issues of racism and the use of excessive force underlying policing policies and practices in New York City during the late 1990s.