Race, crime and justice: An unfair police practice
When four white New York policemen were accused—and eventually acquitted—of murdering an innocent, unarmed black man, the issue of race could hardly be avoided, though it could not be introduced into courtroom proceedings. The officers had stopped Amadou Diallo in 1999 on a routine patrol in the Bronx and ended up shooting him after they mistook the wallet he pulled from his pocket for a gun. If Diallo were white, the odds are great that he would not have been stopped for questioning, much less have been shot to death for reaching for his wallet.