The Diallo case is a clear manifestation of systemic brutality. When news
first came across on television that four members of a white police elite
force
unleashed a barrage of gunfire that required squeezing the triggers of their
semiautomatic weapons 41 times at an unarmed African immigrant in his own
vestibule in the Bronx, the first reaction from most viewers was dismay and
incredulousness which gradually transformed to resignation and expectation.
The facts of the case were not in dispute. An unarmed man with a "dangerous"
racial profile in a neighborhood "hostile" to the police was gunned down
reflexively by a police force conditioned to kill first and ask question
later,
for making an otherwise benign motion of attempting to show his I.D. in his
wallet.
Despite the sensational nature of the killing, the media was immediately
accused by the system as having sensationalized the incident.
The venus of the trial was move to Albany where such racial profiling of both
victim and neighborhood is consider a natural fact of life by a white jury.
Apparently, it was not possible to find 12 fair-minded persons in the Bronx.
As expected, the officers were acquitted on the ground that they did not
violate any departmental guidelines.
Yet an innocent men was killed, for having the wrong profile and for having
his
home in the wrong neighberhood. The verdict was that Diallo fault was his
color
and his address and that he actually caused his own murder. The verdict
implied that had Diallo been white and lived on Park Avenue, his shooting
death
by the police would have been unquestionably a murderous crime.
The verdict was perfectly consistent and logical within the societal values of
the system. Both the prosecution and the defense lauded the justice system for
"working" in a very "difficult" case.
Yet an innocent man was killed by the very authority whose very function
was to
protect him from criminal harm. Just because individual police officers were
found by the justice system to be not at fault, that does not make the
crime of
murder disappear. These four white men killed a black man who was not
breaking
any laws.
If police departmental guidelines result in such murders, then obviously such
guideline are guilty. The institutional culprit, by the logic of the verdict,
must be the law enforcement establishment specifically and the social system
generally.
The verdict of not guilty is a condanmnation of the justice system. It is a
declaration theta justice is part and partial of an unjust socio-political
system that has been flawed at its founding, that high sounding words of
freedom and equal justice for all has color limits. The justice system
logically draws from the depth of the American psyche that to be non-white
is a
structural social crime that can justify institutional mass paranoia.
Diallo's human right had been violated twice, once when he was killed for
being
of the wrong color, and the second time for being denied justice in his
wrongful death for being the wrong color. Yet the Federal Civil Right Division
is hinting that a successful civil right violation suit would be difficult for
lack of direct evidence. That position may be arguable relating to charges
against the four police officers, but the evidence of institutional human
rights violation is undeniable. Again, the justice system is not designed to
police the institutional faults of the system, because The Us cannot accept
that the system is structurally flaw, only that individuals sometimes violate
the just rules of a perfect system.
The annual country reports on human rights just released by the State
Department dealt with more than 100 countries which the US considered in
violation of international norms. American citizens who are outraged and
frustrated by the the structural institutional injustice of their system can
file, through their NGOs, a dissenting report on US conditions and sponsor a
resolution to censor the US government at the UN Human Rights Commission in
Geneva.
Henry C.K. Liu
Louis Proyect
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