Our campaign condemns the statement by Democratic mayoral candidate Fernando Ferrer that the police killing of Amadou Diallo was “not a crime” and that the cops were “overindicted.” We join in the outrage expressed by many others who protested in the streets to demand the cops be jailed for murder after this West African-born worker was gunned down in 1999.

The shooting of Amadou Diallo was a crime. He was killed in a hail of 41 bullets, at the entrance to his apartment building, when four cops from the notorious Street Crimes unit accosted him. They claimed they thought he pulled out a gun, but had only taken out his wallet to show his ID.

The trial that acquitted the cops was a travesty of justice. It signaled open season by the cops on working people, especially those who are Black and other oppressed nationalities. The cops should have been convicted and jailed.

The main defense of the killer cops was that Diallo fit the “generic description” of the criminal they were supposedly looking for. In other words, he was a Black man in a working-class neighborhood. This is how cops approach working people and oppressed nationalities—as criminals or potential criminals.

The Diallo verdict is not an example of how the U.S. judicial system malfunctions. This is how the capitalist justice system works. As the judge explained to the jury, the existing laws and police regulations make it legal for cops to act as on-the-spot executioners in cases like this. The laws are such because the entire system of police, courts, and prisons is designed to protect the rule and property of the tiny class of billionaire families and keep working people in check—from cops who arrest strikers on picket lines to the U.S. military police who torture those locked up in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. What the cops who killed Diallo did was part of carrying out that job.

Democratic politician Ferrer’s remarks are consistent with his role as a loyal defender of big-business interests. He above all wants to reassure the wealthy rulers of New York that he will unswervingly carry out that task if elected mayor. The same is true of Democrat Virginia Fields, Republican Michael Bloomberg, and any of the other capitalist candidates. On Mayor Bloomberg’s watch, police continue to carry out brutality against working people, such as the unprovoked killing of Timothy Stansbury, a Black teenager, last year.

The Socialist Workers campaign stands with those fighting police brutality and other struggles of working people. We point to the need to act independently of the bosses’ government and parties—the Democrats and Republicans—and rely on our own strength and mobilization, especially on our organizations, the unions, to advance the interests of the vast majority.  
 
 
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