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Jewish World Review March 20, 2000 /13 Adar II, 5760

Ann Coulter

Ann Coulter
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To protect, serve ---
and be spat on

http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE is now considering whether to initiate a second criminal prosecution in a case being treated as a classic illustration of the evils of "racial profiling" (at least by police experts such as Al Sharpton). It began when more than four dozen black and Hispanic women told the police they had been raped by a black man. Consequently, the police thought they should look for a black man -- no doubt as a result of their ignorant stereotyping.

Though the rapes began back in the David Dinkins administration, it wasn't until 1997 that the police connected many of the rapes through DNA tests. At the end of 1998, when sketches of the rapist failed to produce any results, Mayor Giuliani announced a $10,000 reward for the rapist's apprehension.

The rapist was not only prolific, but vicious. He often beat and robbed his victims -- black and Hispanic women between the ages of 13 and 53. He typically raped them at gunpoint, raping one woman in front of her young daughter.

You might not have heard about those 51 victims of barbaric rapes in predominantly black areas of New York City. There were no angry protests. No marches on Fifth Avenue. No sensational specials on "Rivera Live" for two weeks straight. Al Sharpton wasn't demanding that the federal government intervene to bring this monster to justice. Indeed, the serial rapist might have continued his savagery unmolested for another six years for all the self-appointed neighborhood spokesmen cared.

But the cops cared, because that's their job.

So in February 1999, four white cops were looking for a rapist who posed no danger to their wives, mothers, sisters and daughters; they didn't live in the predominantly black areas that this rapist had chosen for his hunting grounds. The cops were, it later turned out, less than a mile from where the actual rapist lived.

As everyone in the universe now knows, the four cops patrolling the 43rd Precinct tried to stop a couple of black men acting suspiciously and whom they believed might be the rapist. The first man they stopped without incident. But the second man they tried to stop, Amadou Diallo, ended up dead.

According to the policemen's testimony -- believed by a jury that included four black women -- Diallo didn't stop after the cops identified themselves and asked him to stop. He turned away from them and then pulled out what they thought was a gun. One of the cops shouted "Gun!" and began to shoot. The policeman closest to Diallo fell backward off a step, leading his partners to believe he had been shot by Diallo.

In April 1999, two months after that tragic mistake, the police finally apprehended the rapist who had been terrorizing poor minority neighborhoods for six years. They caught him trying to sell the jewelry of one of his victims to a pawnbroker in the Bronx. A search of his car and home turned up yet more stolen jewelry -- as well as a cache of firepower, including a 9 mm MAC 11, a .380 semiautomatic pistol and a .22-caliber rifle.

Like Diallo, the real rapist was a black man living in a black neighborhood who also had a job. He was a floor polisher for a midtown Manhattan building maintenance company. You might not know that, since The New York Times ran only one lonely article on the rapist's capture.

One article on the police's apprehension of the real rapist in April. But The New York Times managed to find space for more than 700 articles on the cops' miserable mistake in shooting the wrong man back in February.

The statistics suggest that, if anything, New York cops are gun-shy. The police force in Washington, D.C. -- which is almost entirely black -- is responsible for five times the number of civilian shootings per capita as the New York City Police Department. Civilian shootings by the NYPD averaged 63 per year in the '70s. Last year the number was 11 -- one of whom happened to be Amadou Diallo.

These cops have already been tried and acquitted for the Diallo shooting. Now the woman responsible for Waco will decide whether they should be tried again.


JWR contributor Ann Coulter is the author of High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton.


Up

03/16/00: Thank Heaven for the consigliere
03/13/00: Vast concoctions II
03/09/00: The bluebloods voted against you
03/07/00: The Tower of Babble
03/03/00: Vast concoction
03/02/00: Hillary's sartorial lies
02/28/00: You have to break a few eggs to make a joke
02/22/00: I've seen enough killing to support abortion
02/18/00: A liberal lynching
02/15/00: McCain and the flag
02/11/00: The Shakedown Express
02/08/00: To mock a mockingbird
02/05/00: Summing up Campaign 2000: 'Oh, puh-leeze!'
02/01/00: A Confederacy of Dunces
01/28/00: Dollar Bill's racist smear
01/24/00: How high is your freedom quotient?
01/21/00: Numismadness
01/18/00: How dare you attack my wife!
01/14/00: The Gore Buggernaut
01/10/00: The paradox of discrimination law

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