David Dinkins arrested during police-brutality protest against Diallo slaying
A former mayor, two congressmen and two City Council members managed to get themselves arrested at yesterday's police-brutality protest sparked by the killing of Amadou Diallo. But it wasn't easy.
Former Mayor David Dinkins, Reps. Charles Rangel and Gregory Meeks, and Councilmembers Margarita Lopez and Bill Perkins joined the Rev. Al Sharpton at One Police Plaza to protest the shooting of the unarmed African immigrant, who died in a hail of 41 police bullets.
Cops watched as the protest leaders knelt and then stood with arms linked, blocking the entrance.
Then Sharpton announced that Mayor Giuliani would not give the order to arrest them.
That's when they and other protesters entered the building. Cops put them in plastic handcuffs and charged them with criminal trespass. A total of 14 people were arrested.
"The demonstrators this morning did exactly what we did every other day, and they did not arrest us," Sharpton said.
"Then we went inside, and they decided to arrest us."
Giuliani denied having any conversation about arresting or cuffing the demonstrators and called the demonstration a "publicity stunt."
"He is right," Sharpton replied. "We want to keep the public's attention on brutality. That's what Martin Luther King taught us."
After being released, Dinkins said he's waiting for Giuliani to establish order within the Police Department.
"It's not just these four [cops involved in the Diallo shooting]," Dinkins told The Post. "It's the whole attitude of this police department. They continually seem to operate as if the end justifies the means, and it doesn't.
"This kind of thing is going to happen to somebody who is of such stature and of the right ethnic and religious background. [Then] he will have to notice it."
Rangel said there would be more of an outcry if a horse had been shot at 41 times.
"I was shocked that the other clergy, Catholic and Protestant, Jews and gentiles and Muslims, didn't see this as an immoral act," he said.
Rangel appealed to other members of the police force to step forward.
"We need them to say, 'Not in my New York City Department do you do this,'" he said.
Sharpton promised more high-profile protesters.
"This will go on everyday until these four policemen face justice," he said.
-- Ikimulisa Sockwell - 3/15/99