Cityside

The Roots of Outrage

Mayor Giuliani's response to the issue has only amplified their anger. He didn't go to the Bronx, he didn't meet with black leaders, and he didn't bother to take an evenhanded position by saying the cops were cleared by the jury but he understood that people have a right to disagree and seek redress through the system. He simply said, yet again, that New York's Police Department shoots fewer people than many other American big-city departments.

"I have no argument with the mayor about those numbers," says Walcott, "but there's a lot more to building relationships than facts and figures."

The mayor simply refuses -- even if just for the sake of appearances -- to send any signal or take any action that shows he is sensitive to what people are feeling. He doesn't show any respect for the possibility that there is another side to the story and people can hold legitimate views that differ from his.

"I don't know why he is the way he is," says Butts, whose church now holds classes in how to react when stopped by the police, "but he's hopeless. This has nothing to do with politics. People are frustrated that the leader of this city, the leader of the police, refuses to acknowledge there's a problem."

The mayor also refuses to recognize the value of trying to bring people together. Not everyone who questions the circumstances and the number of bullets fired in the shooting of Amadou Diallo is a cop-basher. Not everyone who asks if it's time for the department to throttle back a little given the enormous reductions in crime is an idiot or worse.

"It's almost like no matter what you do, he's gonna insult you and demonize you," says Sharpton. "And for what? For asking why an innocent man was killed by 19 bullets? Even my worst critic would have to say we've built one of the most multi-racial movements the city has seen in years. How can he call us divisive?"

In fact, Giuliani's unwillingness to give any ground, to acknowledge that the police can make a mistake -- to acknowledge that an innocent man's being killed by the police is by definition an injustice -- serves to undermine his and the NYPD's historic achievement. There is no question that the city is a far better place than it was seven years ago, but it's difficult to celebrate the change fully when there are large numbers of people who continue to be afraid of the police.

"With something as egregious as this case, when 41 shots are fired," says Walcott, "it makes people who've always been trying to work inside the system to get reform obsolete. Because it gives justification to those who say no matter what you do, the criminal-justice system doesn't work for us."

The other tragedy of the Diallo case is that the mayor, if he so chose, could lead the city out of its current impasse.

"There is a wall between the black community and the mayor," says Walcott. "He needs to show that 'I really, really do understand what you're saying and what you're going through. I may see it a certain way, but I understand where you're coming from, and this is what I'm gonna try to do to respond to that.' "

On the policing front, it is time for a quality-of-life initiative. In the same way that the department began to take back the streets by first focusing on small signs of disorder -- quality-of-life crimes -- it is now time for a similar program within the department. Change attitudes by starting with the small things: not just the number of people who are killed, but how many are roughed up needlessly, insulted, or subjected to a petty reign of terror.

"We all have a responsibility," says Walcott, "if we believe in the city, to approach this from an optimistic point of view and to do everything we can to try and bridge this divide."

Butts is no less hopeful but believes there'll be little substantive change in the city until there's a change in City Hall. I asked him if he was sorry that he injected politics into his sermon by appearing to endorse Hillary Clinton -- if it didn't undermine the impact of what he said by enabling the mayor to simply dismiss his remarks as partisan politics as usual.

"First of all," he told me, "I don't care what he says at this point. Second of all, I was not trying to endorse Hillary, who I'm not that crazy about, either. I just wanted the people to understand that the only way he's gonna get the depth of how we feel is to defeat him at the polls."