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From: "Thomas J. Kelly" <>
Subject: Re: The "informed Opinion" at the Diallo trial...
Date: Wed, 01 Mar 2000 18:39:27 -0600

wrote:

> Exactly. The "informed opinion" of the expert witness who testified as to
> police training stated that proper procedure was followed throughout. In
> addition, as I stated previously, this was not a random stop. The police
> officers had a general description of a young black man with slight build
> (don't recall the rest of the description, but two photos were placed
> side by side and there are similarities) as a rape suspect.
>
> As Diallo fiddled with his wallet after being told -- repeatedly -- to
> freeze, police officers took cover and took defensive action. Since he
> did not fall, police officers thought he may have been wearing a bullet
> proof vest -- which had been common (and illegal) in the area. As one of
> the officers tripped and fell, the others thought he had been shot, and
> responded appropriately. All in all, procedure was followed, according to
> the witness, which by the way, was not challenged by the prosecution.
>
> Marc

Which then begs a question. Why, in four hours in a supposedly "high
crime" area prior to accosting Diallo did the four cops from the street
crimes unit see nothing else to take action on?

If you can sit around for four hours and see nothing of interest (read
danger) how come you are suddenly in fear of your life?

I suspect a big part of the problem lies in the fact that law
enforcement has developed a "military" mentality.

The ultimate purpose of an army is kill people and break things. That's
what armies are designed for and do very well. That's the reason that
our current force is being degraded by the sheer number of humanitarian
and peace-keeping (read policing) missions they are being assigned.

There is a lot of concern that we are ruing the edge of our military
forces by deploying them on such missions.

Then we have the police.....

Arrest two or three folks - use 15 cops.

SWAT team - wear military camouflage uniforms (designed to provide
stealth in the woods - not on the street).

FBI Academy training to local police forces - if you shoot it's one to
the head and two to the chest.

References to the streets being a "war zone"

Etc, etc, ad nauseum.

Maybe it's time we figured out some way to turn soldiers back into
soldiers instead of cops and convince cops that they aren't soldiers.

The top might be a good place to begin. Anyone remember that the only
thing that bothered Il Duce was that 41 bullets were fired. The fact
that Diallo was unarmed didn't even come into play. As long as the
Mayor and his police chief condone and support these actions they are
going to continue unabated.


Just as an aside - I live out in the country in Oklahoma so I still get
network coverage from NYC on my satellite dish - and I've noticed over
the past year or so that in almost all of Rudy's appearances before the
press - for any reason - he seems to have his Police Commissioner close
at hand. What happened to just showing up without the show of force?

This thread:

• Re: The "informed Opinion" at the Diallo trial... by "Thomas J. Kelly" <>