The demonstrators gathered in front of a mural depicting the two young men, which is painted on the side of the Rosario home. On the front of the building are the names of more than 50 young people killed by the city police. The vigil was organized by Parents Against Police Brutality.

Many of the 25 people who took part in the action are involved in fights of their own against police brutality. They included members of the Acosta family, who were beaten and arrested by cops while attending a family barbeque in front of their house in the Sunset Park area of Brooklyn last July 4; Juanita Young, whose son Malcolm Ferguson, 23, was shot in the back of the head and killed by police officer Louis Rivera of the police Street Crime Unit in March 2000; and Iris Vega, Hilton Vega’s mother.

Margarita Rosario, Anthony’s mother and a founder of Parents Against Police Brutality, said, “We are families that are determined to stick together to continue the fight because the execution of young people hasn’t stopped. If we don’t continue this, the young people who have died have no voice. We want to prevent this from happening again and stop the cops from functioning as criminals in blue.”

The family currently has a civil lawsuit filed against the police department and the city. “I told my lawyers I don’t want a settlement. I want a trial,” said Margarita Rosario. “The point is to expose the cops. A civil ruling won’t put the cops in jail, but it will disgrace them.”

The two detectives who shot Vega and Rosario were never convicted, despite evidence by the Civilian Complaint Review Board indicating that they were shot while lying face down on the floor. Rosario was shot 14 times in the back and on the side of his body, and Vega was shot eight times in the back and the head.

The same week as the Bronx protest, the family of Amadou Diallo, an immigrant from Guinea who was fatally shot outside his Bronx apartment by four cops of the elite Street Crime Unit, agreed to a $3 million settlement of its civil lawsuit against New York. The suit was scheduled to be heard on March 1.

Just after midnight on Feb. 4, 1999, four cops shot Diallo 41 times as he stood in the doorway of his apartment in the Soundview section of the Bronx.

In 2000 the four cops were acquitted in a state trial. The trial had been moved to Albany, New York, after a court ruling that the political atmosphere in the city—that is, the widespread protests against this killing—prevented the four cops from getting a fair trial. It was, in fact, months of sustained protests in New York, drawing thousands of working people, that led to the indictment of the cops and the abolition of the Street Crime Unit.

After the acquittal, thousands marched in New York in a series of protests against police brutality and the freeing of the killer cops.

Under the terms of the January 5 settlement, neither the city nor the NYPD admit any wrongdoing in the case.

Diallo’s mother, Kadiatou Diallo, said she felt satisfied that after a years-long fight the city had acknowledged the shooting was a mistake. “An apology was given today on the record,” she said.

The city will pay the $3 million in a lump sum, and the state Surrogate’s Court will decide how that is divided between the family and its lawyers.  
 
 
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