By: Hugh B. Price
President
National Urban League
The recent decision by a federal Court of Appeals in New York to dismiss the convictions of three white former police officers in the notorious 1997 police sexual assault of Abner Louima has re-opened a disgraceful chapter in the history of the New York Police Department.
And it has re-ignited the question of what is the police department's-and the entire criminal justice system's-attitude toward citizens of color.
Is it "to protect and serve," as the good-government rhetoric of the NYPD puts it? Or, when it comes to law-abiding black and Hispanic people, does that commitment stop at the threshold of the precinct?
These, and other questions must be posed even as two things appear clear.
One is that the New York police department's behavior toward citizens of color has noticeably improved in recent years-thanks to the work of police brass and front-line officers and, most important, local community leaders and residents.
Also, one must acknowledge that the Court appears to have been correct in ruling that during the conduct of the trials important legal principles were violated which resulted in the accused officers not receiving a fair trial.
The Court of Appeals dismissed the conviction of one of the officers for helping to hold down Louima during the assault, and overturned verdicts that that officer and two others had conspired to obstruct justice in the case.
The Court did not evaluate the ex-officers' guilt or innocence of the charges, although it made clear that the evidence strongly suggested that the officers had indeed engaged in obstruction of justice.
For the time being, the ruling means that, five years after Abner Louima, an innocent man, endured a sexual assault of almost unspeakable depravity, only Justin Volpe, the ex-officer who actually committed the assault, is in prison. (Volpe, who pled guilty, is serving a thirty-year sentence.)
This is the case despite the fact that the assault was committed in the midst of a busy police precinct.
That it was committed by the sadist Volpe and at least one other police officer who held Louima down.
That it was witnessed by several other police officers in the station house.
That its details were soon known to numerous other police officers who were in the station house that night.
Unfortunately, when it came to fighting crime in their own ranks, a dozen or more police officers with knowledge of details of the crime retreated that night behind the "blue wall of silence," disgracing themselves and their uniforms and the city they had sworn to protect and serve.
Federal prosecutors have said they will retry the former officer previously convicted of holding down Louima during the assault. The prosecutors also must decide whether new obstruction of justice charges can be brought against the other ex- officers. We strongly urge that they decide to do so.
Further, as the New York Times noted editorially, if federal prosecutors do not pursue new obstruction of justice charges, the local district attorney can-and should.
All decent people should applaud continued efforts to pursue a full measure of justice in this case, and the U.S. Department of Justice should support those efforts with whatever investigative and prosecutorial resources are needed to bring all of the remaining offenders to justice.
The Louima case cries out for top priority treatment because nothing less than the integrity of America's criminal justice system is at stake, as the anguished comments of New Yorker Dariel James make clear.
"I think we were all hoping that these police officers would become the example of what happens to police who display that kind of outrageous violence," James told a Times reporter after the appeals court decision, "And now to see them just go free, it makes our whole legal system look even scarier. What are intelligent people supposed to think?"
Intelligent people would be right to think that the assault of Abner Louima, in its brazen, racially motivated sadism by one police officer and in the conspiracy of other police officers to obstruct justice, has struck at the very heart of the black community's relationship with police everywhere-and with the American nation itself.
For, the barbaric assault on Mr. Louima was a modern-day lynching, with all the withering humiliation and physical danger that characterized that once-common crime. The difference this time is the victim lived to tell about it.
That a full measure of justice in this case has not been reached only underscores-again-the point criminologist Christopher E. Stone, of the Vera Institute of Criminal Justice, made in an essay in The State of Black America 1996.
Stone wrote that "African Americans face a paradox when it comes to crime and justice. As a group, African Americans suffer severely from crime in their communities. Yet, they have learned, justifiably, to mistrust the government institutions charged with fighting crime."
Can those who seek justice trust the institutions of government to see to it that justice will be done in the case of the assault against Abner Louima?
Enviroshop is maintained by dedicated NetSys Interactive Inc. owners & employees who generously contribute their time to maintenance & editing, web design, custom programming, & website hosting for Enviroshop.