[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 2]
[House]
[Pages 1843-1850]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



               A CRISIS IN THE JUSTICE SYSTEM IN AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 1999, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Owens) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, today was a historic day; and I join my 
colleagues on the other side in celebrating the passage of the Senior 
Citizens' Freedom to Work Act. It is a great achievement. We all should 
be quite proud of it. I congratulate my colleagues. It was a bipartisan 
achievement, and we should all celebrate it and also take the next 
step. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle said we should take 
steps to reduce the Social Security tax as soon as possible, so I hope 
that that is going to be somewhere in the proposed budget proposals and 
appropriations proposals, that we will begin to take back, roll back, 
the increase in the payroll taxes.
  The payroll taxes represent the largest increases in taxes over the 
last 2 decades. So we heard our colleagues on the Republican side say 
they think it ought to be rolled back. We want to endorse that 
wholeheartedly. Let us roll back the payroll tax and lower the taxes 
that people pay for Social Security.
  The immortal words of Thomas Jefferson kept ringing in my ears as I 
listened to the debate today, ``life, liberty and the pursuit of 
happiness,'' the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
  In affirming the fact that we want to take care of our senior 
citizens, we say we want to have more life, longer life, and we are all 
in favor of that. Life is sacred; and all over the world I think there 
is no ideology, no political philosophy at this point and no religion 
that condones irreverence for life.

[[Page 1844]]

  Reverence for life exists everywhere. No political party anywhere in 
the world openly says that some people should be destroyed and others 
should be kept in existence anymore. Reverence for life is there. We 
hope that the reverence for life, although there might be a debate 
about when life begins, how early it begins, whether there is life as 
we know it in the womb, or afterwards, all of those debates are debates 
where we respect each other's opinions and ought to work that out. But 
certainly once a human being is here, reverence for that life ought to 
exist.
  As we practice law enforcement, as we practice law enforcement we 
must all bear that in mind, that no one can be careless about another 
human being's life.
  I am going to be on the floor discussing the Congressional Black 
Caucus alternative budget. I have said before that everything that we 
do in this Congress relates to the budget, and certainly the Social 
Security and the rollback of taxes is one item that we shall propose in 
our Congressional Black Caucus alternative budget. We will be dealing 
with many other subjects, education, housing, health, health care, 
economic development, livable communities, foreign aid, welfare, low-
income assistance, juvenile justice and law enforcement.
  This last item, juvenile justice and law enforcement, was placed in 
the top priorities of the Congressional Black Caucus alternative budget 
preparation process by the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee), 
who said it may not be a big budget item, she is not sure what form it 
is going to take, but we should address in this budget, which sets the 
tone for all that we are going to do this year, it will set the tone 
for the way the appropriations come out.
  We are spending money, and in spending money we show what is most 
important to us. We ought to deal with the juvenile justice and law 
enforcement system, certainly from the point of view of African 
Americans and other minorities, because there has been a series of 
eruptions in the last year that have made it quite clear that America 
has a very profound problem when it comes to law enforcement for 
minorities.
  The recent verdict in the trial of the four policemen who shot and 
killed Amadou Diallo is an indication of how profound that problem is. 
The verdict is not only outrageous because of the fact that it allows 
four armed policemen who shot down an innocent man standing in a 
doorway in the vestibule of his own home, it also is an outrage because 
of the fact that to cover up for those four men, a whole system went 
into place. The judicial system, the criminal justice system, 
collaborated in a coverup. We had very strange things happening.
  This is a problem. There are rogue cops. There are extreme elements 
in the law enforcement profession. We see them all the time, from Waco 
to the Amadou Diallo shooting. We see it in Los Angeles, where 
policemen are confessing about 2 decades of placing evidence on people 
and pretending they are guilty, convicting them, and also beating them 
up and sometimes shooting them. All kinds of things are being confessed 
and uncovered in the Los Angeles Police Department.
  We saw it in New Jersey, when finally the New Jersey State Police 
admitted they had an official policy of racial profiling. In 
Philadelphia some years ago we had the same problem of policemen who 
confessed after they were exposed of wrongfully placing evidence and 
people being convicted as a result.
  We see it tragically in Illinois, where in Illinois the governor said 
there should be no more executions until we take steps to straighten 
out law enforcement and the criminal justice system so that innocent 
people are not placed on death row. Why did he do this? Because of 25 
people who were on death row, indisputable evidence was generated to 
prove that 13 were innocent, 13 of 25 were innocent. That, said the 
governor, is more than he can take; and he decided he would no more be 
a part of the possibility that innocent people would die.
  So we have in the whole Nation a pattern. We have 2 million people in 
prison in this Nation, and some people are proud of that. We are the 
only industrialized nation that has that kind of large number of people 
in prison. Most of those 2 million people in prison are people who are 
minorities. We have a problem that is nationwide. Amadou Diallo's case 
is not a New York case, and for that reason I come to the floor of the 
House to make certain that it gets the appropriate attention here in 
this forum.
  Mr. Speaker, the polls are showing in New York State that the 
overwhelming majority of the citizens of New York think that there was 
a miscarriage of justice in the verdict on the Amadou Diallo trial. 
Black and white together demonstrated in the streets of New York 
against this outrage. Criminally negligent homicide was obvious, if not 
manslaughter. After all, 41 bullets were fired, 19 entered the body of 
Amadou Diallo, and some of those bullets were fired after the body was 
on the ground. There were bullet holes in his feet, indicating that he 
was lying prone and they were still shooting.
  This problem of miscarriage of justice in the criminal justice system 
unfortunately is a nationwide problem, as I have just said, not just a 
New York problem. For that reason, we must insist that this Nation 
address the issue at this level.
  We are violating human rights on a massive scale. The situation 
deserves the immediate attention of the Congress of the United States. 
Acquittal of the officers who slaughtered Amadou Diallo is an 
outrageous miscarriage of justice, and it is a profound abuse of human 
rights.
  The leadership of the Caring Majority now has a sacred duty to set 
forth and carry out for as long as necessary a comprehensive plan for 
justice for Amadou Diallo and all the related people who are victimized 
by an oppressive criminal justice system.
  We want a permanent end to systemic police oppression and criminal 
justice system conspiracies throughout the entire Nation. Such a plan 
must include mass demonstrations, because only through mass 
demonstrations do we offer all citizens the opportunity to show their 
outrage. But beyond the direct action, there must be long-term legal, 
legislative and international diplomatic efforts to address this human 
rights abuse.
  The criminal justice system in America allows itself to be 
contaminated by the extremists in law enforcement, by the extremists in 
the police profession. The rogue cops and the rogue agents are abetted 
by the fact that the system will not expose them.
  When the rogue cops and the extremists commit crimes, or even violate 
ordinary procedures, immediately a coverup system goes into motion. An 
entire police department goes into motion to cover up the actions of a 
few, automatically, regardless of who they are.
  Several of these police who shot Amadou Diallo had a record of being 
brutal and using excessive force. That record was not allowed to be 
discussed in the trial, one of the problems with the trial. Several of 
them had been involved in incidents that were of a racist nature. None 
of their past history could be discussed.
  But all of it is relevant when you are seeking to determine which 
elements of the police department, which elements in the law 
enforcement system, are extreme and ought to be exposed. But instead of 
exposing them, respectful cops, people who are decent and know better, 
people who have a guilty conscience for years afterwards, go into 
motion. They call it the blue wall of silence. Automatically say 
nothing, do nothing to hurt your fellow policemen, and, in some cases, 
tell a lie, cover up.
  One of the reasons Amadou Diallo was shot so many times was the fact 
that there is also an unwritten code which says that if you have an 
extreme situation like that, every cop must be involved who is on the 
scene. There were four, and, even though he was down and dead, all four 
had to shoot, because that way you had a situation where there was no 
innocent witness. Nobody could be innocent and be a witness to what 
happened against the others. That is an unwritten code, which

[[Page 1845]]

results in many times excessive shooting by police, large numbers of 
bullets being fired. The public is baffled, why did they do that? They 
did it so everybody would be culpable; nobody could be a witness.
  When these extreme situations occur, judges become part of the 
process of coverup, district attorneys become part of the process of 
coverup. The rigged American criminal justice system has once more in 
the case of Amadou Diallo massacred the human rights of a powerless 
minority person.
  Amadou Diallo was, first, a hate crime victim of deadly profiling. 
Policemen going through a minority neighborhood see a man on the steps 
of his own home, in his own vestibule, and decide he might be a 
criminal. If that is not racial profiling, I do not know what is racial 
profiling. It never happens in white neighborhoods. It never happens. 
We have not had these outrageous extreme cases in white neighborhoods. 
Amadou Diallo was a victim of police profiling.
  He was, secondly, the victim of a desperate police coverup, a coverup 
conspiracy which began when the police officers, who knew he was 
already helpless, all fired bullets into his body in order to guarantee 
that all four would be defendants and there would be no innocent 
witnesses. Like the blue wall of silence, this multiple assault 
technique is part of an unwritten code of coverup.
  Additionally, Amadou Diallo was a victim of the government's failure 
to appoint a special prosecutor to try a unique case involving a police 
department which routinely works in collaboration with the Bronx 
district attorney's office. Now, we have made demands for years that in 
cases involving police corruption, police misconduct, a special outside 
prosecutor who does not work with those police on an ongoing basis 
ought to be appointed.

                              {time}  1615

  For the last 40 years we have made that demand, and it still goes 
unheeded. The prosecution's case in this trial, and the whole world saw 
it, and I want to congratulate the judge for at least one thing, he was 
willing to allow the trial to be on TV. Everybody could see the 
ineptness of the District Attorney's presentation. Now, we cannot 
believe that it was by mistake.
  Finally, Amadou Diallo was a victim of bold manipulation of other 
vital components of the judicial system. A judge who was known for his 
predilection to defend police officers, known for that, who was 
ignorant of and insensitive to the civic and social environment in 
which Diallo was killed. The New York City environment, this judge in 
Albany, the capital of New York State, knew very little about it.
  And then they recruited, in this change of venue, moving from New 
York City, the Bronx, to Albany, they recruited a jury that was 
definitely unfamiliar with the New York City factors, and large numbers 
of Upstate people are hostile to the whole complex set of problems that 
New York City faces, hostile to New York City's complex problems.
  Is that a jury of peers of the police? I do not think so. They do not 
live in Albany. Is it a jury of the peers of Amadou Diallo? Certainly 
not. But not by accident did all of this happen: The venue was changed, 
and a judge is selected who constantly asks the jury to see the case 
through the eyes of the police.
  When we take the charge of the judge to the jury, we would have a 
classic case of a jury being assaulted repeatedly with statements which 
push them to a decision that was an unjust decision and a miscarriage 
of justice. Given the negative structuring of this case, its outcome 
was predictable.
  Nonetheless, the caring majority of our community and the entire 
Nation, the shock, we are not evil enough to believe there is not a 
level of decency below which common sense and self-evident truths will 
not allow even the oppressive criminal justice system to sink. There 
might have been subtle factors that could be twisted to confuse a jury. 
However, manslaughter or negligent homicide were certainly one or two 
obvious crimes which they should have been convicted for.
  There are difficult days and months and years ahead, but the 
leadership of the African-American community and other endangered 
minorities, because the same problem in New York City is a problem in 
the Hispanic community, it is a problem in the Asian community, these 
other minorities are equally endangered. All decent, caring citizens 
must not allow this outrage to continue. For as long as necessary, we 
must unite to persevere and unite to push for justice.
  Let me just pause for a moment before I ask my colleague, the 
gentleman from New York (Mr. Meeks), the gentleman from Queens (Mr. 
Meeks), to join me. Let me just pause and repeat what I said before.
  There are a set of demands that were made in connection with the 
Amadou Diallo killing. On Saturday, March 27, 1999, that is a little 
less than a year ago, a group of people in New York City met about the 
Amadou Diallo case. They drew up a set of demands at that time. I am 
going to read those demands, those 10 demands.
  As I said before a few minutes ago, these ten demands which were set 
forth on March 27 of 1999 were demands, most of which had been repeated 
over and over again for the last 40 years. The characters change. There 
is a different mayor now, but previous mayors have been approached in 
the same way.
  Mayor Giuliani in this case was asked to immediately implement the 
recommendations of the Mollen Commission, which existed for a long 
time. They called a long time ago for the establishment of an 
independent investigative body with full subpoena power that had 
jurisdiction over police corruption and police brutality in New York 
City.
  Twice the City Council of New York has passed legislation creating a 
body to monitor corruption, but the mayor has done everything in his 
power to block its implementation, the present mayor, first by veto, 
and then when the Council overrode his veto, by tying the matter up in 
court.
  The mayor must also implement the recommendations from both the 
majority and dissenting reports of his own task force that he appointed 
in 1997 in the wake of the shocking Abner Louima incident.
  Abner Louima was a Haitian immigrant who was lucky that he did not 
lose his life after having been grossly abused in the police station. 
Only the hard work of a hospital which was able to deal with the damage 
done to his internal organs saved his life, and he at least is alive 
today, but there are probably few police brutality victims who have 
lived after experiencing such horror.
  The second demand made this time, and it has been made for the last 
40 years, was that a civilian complaint review board be immediately 
appointed. We had one that was dismantled by this present mayor; that 
it be immediately reappointed, that it be strengthened and fully 
funded, so it can effectively investigate civilian complaints of police 
misconduct.
  The civilian complaint review board has been on the table for 40 
years. For 40 years this reasonable proposal has been frustrated and 
distorted, and we have had enough. There are members of our community 
that we have appealed to, not to get irrational, not to be emotional, 
do not become violent, do not do anything outrageous, that would injure 
and harm individuals or groups or the image of our city or the image of 
our neighborhoods.
  Let us all be rational and reasonable. Let us understand that we are 
all disciples of Martin Luther King, and nonviolence is the way to work 
out these kinds of problems. They are waiting for us to work them out. 
We have made these reasonable demands for 40 years, and for 40 years we 
have not been able to make any headway.
  The third demand, the State legislature must pass legislation 
creating a special prosecutor for police brutality and corruption in 
New York. In conjunction with this, the State Attorney General must 
create a special unit on police misconduct, and should issue an annual 
report documenting instances of misconduct throughout the State.
  This was a reasonable demand made by reasonable people, and they have 
ignored it. Only under great pressure,

[[Page 1846]]

only under great pressure did the last Governor, Governor Cuomo, 
appoint a special prosecutor in the horrifying Griffeth case, where a 
man was chased to his death on a highway, but that was an exception to 
the rule. Why not as a rule do what is rational and reasonable; 
understand that the District Attorneys cannot effectively prosecute the 
police? They work with the police every day. They are not in a position 
to prosecute the police. There is a gross conflict of interest that we 
cannot overcome.
  Item four, the police department must develop a comprehensive 
training program, developed in consultation with outside experts, to 
school its officers in racial and cultural sensitivity, and must also 
implement a rigorous process of in-depth psychological screening of its 
recruits and officers.
  I can only tell the Members that I know police officers who say that 
when this effort was made, under pressure, with one of the two teams 
that they pretended to introduce comprehensive training related to 
racial and cultural sensitivity, that it has been a big joke. The 
police force has laughed it into oblivion. They do not take it 
seriously because the command from the top does not make themselves 
take it seriously. This is a reasonable demand.
  Demand number four is a reasonable demand. Why is it not met? Why do 
they not respond to reasonable demands?
  Demand number four, the New York Police Department should reflect the 
makeup of the citizen population it serves. New York City police 
officers should live in New York City. The State legislature should 
immediately pass a law mandating residency for city officers.
  This is a reasonable demand. I ask Members, anywhere in America, is 
this an unreasonable demand? In most of our counties and cities 
throughout the United States there is a requirement that police 
officers and other civil servants live in the community. New York City 
is the exception. New York City is the exception even in New York 
State, where most jurisdictions require that their local police live in 
their jurisdiction, that they live in the city or county that they 
serve.
  Why is New York City an exception? Because the power brokers in New 
York are such that they were able to force the State, to get the State 
legislature to pass laws which exempt New York City. They cannot do 
what other places in New York State can do. They cannot require a 
residency law.
  The City Council of New York City has on several occasions passed 
laws which require police to live in the city; not to disrupt the lives 
of existing police officers and say, if you are a police officer now 
you have to move back into the city. No. It has been very generous, and 
they only require new recruits to. Anybody coming into the police 
department as a new recruit must live in the city.
  The City Council passed it, it has gone to the State legislature, and 
it refuses to pass it.
  One of my close colleagues, Assemblyman Al Vann, has recently offered 
legislation again in the New York State Assembly. It has no chance of 
passing by the Republican-controlled Senate or being signed by the 
Governor.
  This is a reasonable demand. This is the way it is done in most of 
America. Why cannot the power brokers, the mayor, the Governor of New 
York city and New York State, respond in a reasonable way to reasonable 
demands?
  Demand number six, the police commissioner must also take specific 
and immediately steps to recruit more minorities and women to serve as 
police officers and develop a plan to increase promotion opportunities 
for women and minority officers.
  This is a reasonable demand, that we have recruiting programs to get 
more minorities. The number of minorities in the police force has gone 
down over the last two decades instead of up. The number of minorities, 
Hispanic and black, are less now in the upper ranks than they were 10 
years ago. We have obviously not had a sincere effort by the police 
department and the city administrations to meet this kind of reasonable 
demand.
  Demand number seven, who can disagree with demand number seven, that 
the salary and benefits for police officers must be improved? Law 
enforcement officers are entrusted with extraordinary responsibilities 
and they should be compensated accordingly.
  Traditionally, New York City police officers have certainly not been 
underpaid when compared to the surrounding suburbs, but now their pay 
is falling behind. We think that the recruitment problem of high-
quality people, whether they are white or African-American or Hispanic, 
the recruitment of high-quality people is enhanced by maintaining 
decent salaries and benefits, and certainly the members of the police 
department do not disagree with us on that one.
  However, we see no special effort to package the police benefits and 
salaries and the recruitment program in a way to attract more 
minorities to the present police structure.
  Demand number eight, the police department's 48-hour rule, which 
delays the ability of the New York Police Department investigators to 
question any police officer charged with violations of New York Police 
Department rules and regulations, must be eliminated. They have 48 
hours in which they cannot question a police officer in New York. If 
something goes wrong, he has 48 hours to get his story together. We 
cannot question him until the 48-hour period has elapsed.
  Demand number nine, that weapons, ammunition, and tactics used by the 
department must be assessed and periodically reviewed, not only to 
measure effectiveness, but to protect the safety of innocent New 
Yorkers. The use of hollow point bullets should be discontinued 
immediately. That is point number nine.
  I must congratulate the mayor and the city administration for 
responding to point number nine. After the death of Amadou Diallo, at 
least there has been a restriction on the use of hollow point bullets. 
So we have ten demands, and one, there has been a reasonable effort 
made to try to comply with it.
  Point number 10 is addressed not to the mayor of New York City, but 
to the Congress. Congress must call on the Justice Department to honor 
its commitment to monitor and issue annual reports documenting 
instances of police misconduct throughout the country. This promise was 
made in the wake of the Rodney King incident, and has yet to be acted 
upon.
  The Justice Department is still too timid in its approach to the 
violation of civil rights and human rights of citizens across the 
country by police and the criminal justice system. These are reasonable 
demands, and when we tell our people in our districts, be reasonable, 
do not get too emotional, we are going to resolve this problem through 
nonviolent, legal, rational means, we are going to negotiate it 
through, as leaders we would like some response from the other side of 
the table.
  The other side of the table not only includes Mayor Giuliani, in the 
case of New York City, not only includes Governor Pataki, but the whole 
power structure of New York, the businessmen and what we call the 
permanent government of New York.

                              {time}  1630

  Certain organizations and institutions sit there year after year as 
we make these demands and they put no pressure on to make certain that 
reasonable responses are made to reasonable demands. They are as guilty 
as the public officials who year after year, administration after 
administration, ignore these reasonable demands.
  At this point, I would like to yield to the gentleman from New York 
(Mr. Meeks), my colleague from Queens, who is also a member of the Task 
Force on Police Brutality of the Congressional Black Caucus.
  Mr. MEEKS of New York. Mr. Speaker, I compliment my colleague, the 
gentleman from New York, (Mr. Owens) for his very eloquent statement. 
As indicated, I am the cochair of the Congressional Black Caucus's Task 
Force on police brutality. And just late last year as a task force, we 
traveled and conducted four hearings around this country; one here in 
Washington, D.C.; one in New York City; one in Chicago, Illinois; and 
one in Los Angeles, California.

[[Page 1847]]

  The theme of the testimony that we heard was the same. There seems to 
be a pervasive police mentality that is going on across this Nation 
that is very Bull Connor'ish, particularly in the African-American and 
Latino communities.
  There was a cry throughout all of these hearings, and there were a 
number of other cities, major urban cities throughout this country that 
were crying for us to come to their cities too to conduct such hearings 
in which we would have heard the same type of testimony.
  As a result of the Congressional Black Caucus and the gentleman from 
Illinois (Mr. Conyers), the ranking member of the Committee on the 
Judiciary, and a number of organizations such as the American Civil 
Liberties Union, the National Council of La Raza, the National Urban 
League, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored 
People, the time is right, based upon the debate that we just heard 
from the gentleman from New York, the time is right now for us in 
Congress to move and pass some aggressive legislation that will begin 
to address this police mentality that is Bull Connor'ish.
  Mr. Speaker, it will also do something to bring people together as 
opposed to divide us. The gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Conyers) is 
sponsoring a bill very shortly that all Members of this House need to 
join in support of called the Law Enforcement Trust and Integrity Act 
of 2000.
  This bill will create a national minimum standard for law enforcement 
agencies to meet. It provides tools for developing better operations, 
enhances the tools and resources available to the Federal Government as 
well as individual citizens to investigate and stop police misconduct, 
and addresses a number of issues such as deaths in custody, racial 
profiling, and abuses by the Immigration and Naturalization and Customs 
Services that have traditionally plagued Americans of color.
  The time is right. It is within our national interest to have an 
accreditation of law enforcement agencies. There are currently no 
national standards and, as a result, there are huge discrepancies 
between law enforcement agencies and policies dealing with everything 
from the use of force to handling of citizen complaints.
  Included in these new uniform standards would be early warning 
programs, civilian review procedures, traffic stop documentation and 
procedures, administrative due process requirements and training. The 
bill also provides for law enforcement development plans, management 
schemes, managements like the new management standards will deal with 
administrative due process, residency requirements, as the gentleman 
from New York (Mr. Owens) was talking about, compensation and benefits, 
use of force, racial profiling, early warning programs, and civilian 
review boards.
  It will deal with training of law enforcement agencies and it will 
require standards in the areas of the use of lethal and nonlethal force 
dealing with law enforcement misconduct, including excessive force, 
racial profiling, and how police officers communicate with the public.
  Recruitment: Law enforcement agencies will also be required to look 
at policies relating to recruitment and hiring a diverse force that is 
representative of the communities they serve. They develop valid job-
related educational and psychological standards and initiatives to 
encourage residency and continuing education.
  Oversight: Law enforcement agencies will be required to look at how 
they handle citizens' complaints with the potential establishment of 
civilian review boards and the implementation of early warning programs 
and administrative due process. There will be administrative due 
process procedures. There will be enhanced funding to combat police 
misconduct; enhanced authority in practice and pattern investigations.
  There will be a study of deaths in custody. There will be a 
deprivation of rights under the color of law, a national task force on 
law enforcement and oversight.
  An immigration enforcement and review commission should be 
established, as well as Federal data collection on racial profiling.
  These are some of the items that will be covered in this bill that 
the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Conyers) will be coming out with very 
shortly called the Law Enforcement Trust and Integrity Act of 2000.
  Let me move to the terrible situation, which is just a symptom of 
what is taking place across America, and that is the matter in regards 
to Amadou Diallo. I know some say that there was a jury and the jury 
was an integrated jury, but that is not all that matters in this 
particular case. What does matter, and I say this as a former 
prosecutor and an attorney, I know that a judge can charge one in to 
make one's case, or charge one out to lose their case. In listening to 
the charges of this judge, I knew immediately thereafter that tragedy 
and a miscarriage of justice would be had.
  I find that a decision by the appellate division, which changed the 
venue of this case, which virtually denied Mr. Diallo the opportunity 
of having this case judged by his peers, and even the police officers 
who were police officers of the City of New York, there should have 
been members of the jury from the City of New York. The changing of 
venue, in my opinion, was a miscarriage of justice.
  What matters is that this jury, being from Albany, was not acquainted 
with the pattern and practice of police violence against minority 
communities in New York City. It simply cannot be that an innocent 
person standing at his own doorway, minding his own business, was shot 
down in a firing squad fashion and those who committed this act are not 
guilty of anything. Not even reckless endangerment.
  Hundreds of millions of people around the world, who laud the virtues 
and the superiority of the American system of justice, can now see some 
hypocrisy of America's claims, particularly when it comes to people of 
color. All New Yorkers, indeed all Americans can also see this. And we 
see it, I see it, and some of the other hypocrisy of the mayor of the 
City of New York.
  When a verdict suits the mayor, he praises the court system. But 
where a decision is contrary to what he wants, he calls judges and 
jurors silly and irresponsible.
  We and our constituents will never forget that this mayor approved 
the creation of the Street Crimes unit that is over 90 percent white, 
no diversity, and that the mayor allowed it to operate under the 
slogan, ``We own the night.''
  We should note with alarm the jubilation by many members of the 
police department in precincts around this city. Also note that it has 
been reported that the judge, after the verdict, went to a celebration 
party with the lawyers of the defendants. Imagine. Judges, police 
officers celebrating and forgetting that an innocent, unarmed man was 
killed.
  Those who celebrate dismiss the death of Mr. Diallo and him as an 
innocent man make a mistake saying this will erase the unwarranted acts 
of a firing squad. Do those jubilant people believe that they made 
policing easier? That this is the way to garner the respect of New 
Yorkers? I submit not. I submit it is a Bull Connor'ish type mentality.
  Have they forgotten that in New York City that a majority of the New 
Yorkers that they swore to defend and protect are, in fact, people of 
color? The killing of Amadou Diallo and the acquittal of the four 
police officers unfortunately follow a practice and pattern of police 
relations with the black and Latino community that has been in effect 
for a very long time.
  Clearly, reforms are necessary and must be instituted with speed, 
courage, and determination. But it is clear that the administration of 
the New York City Police Department and the command structure there are 
incapable of instituting meaningful reforms without Federal 
intervention.
  The City of New York is hurting today. There is an open wound there. 
That wound was caused by the decision that sends a message that the 
police can in fact fire 41 bullets at an unarmed man of color as he 
enters his

[[Page 1848]]

home. A healing of these wounds can only happen if the Justice 
Department conducts a thorough investigation of the violation of Mr. 
Diallo's civil rights.
  In addition, as I said this morning, they must relentlessly evaluate 
and find just solutions to the patterns and practices of the New York 
City Police Department. If New York City is to heal, the message must 
be that all human life is valuable. The Justice Department is the only 
doctor that is available that can help us heal the wound of the City of 
New York.
  I say to the rest of the citizens of New York, we must come together 
and arm ourselves with the ballot and go out this November, and every 
November thereafter, like we have never done in the history of this 
country. I yield back to the gentleman from New York.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New York (Mr. 
Meeks), who is also cochair of the Congressional Black Caucus Task 
Force on Police Brutality. I just want to repeat for all, before I 
yield to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Towns), my second colleague 
from New York, I want to repeat that the fact that we are talking about 
the verdict that the majority of New York City and New York State 
citizens consider to be a miscarriage of justice. We are talking about 
the fact that 10 reasonable demands that have been made for the last 40 
years which, if they had been heeded, would have gone a long ways 
toward preventing what happened in the Amadou Diallo case.
  We are talking about the fact that there are extremist elements in 
police departments, in law enforcement agencies. The rogue cops and the 
extremist elements, however, are aided and abetted by the cover-up 
procedure that takes place, from the commissioner and the mayor on 
down, when something goes wrong.

                              {time}  1645

  The criminal justice system goes into motion to cover up these cases. 
Our appeal is to meet those 10 demands in the case of New York City. We 
will go a long ways toward seeing to it that this never happens again.
  We also appeal for national action. Tomorrow, members of the 
Congressional Black Caucus will be meeting with the Justice Department 
to talk about their duty to intervene in this case, to follow through 
on the legislation that already exists, which enables them to 
investigate whether or not the civil rights of Amadou Diallo were 
violated. If they were violated, they can prosecute these same four 
policemen on the violation of the civil rights of Amadou Diallo.
  We also would like national action in this Congress. My colleague, 
the gentleman from New York (Mr. Meeks), has said that the gentleman 
from Michigan (Mr. Conyers) will be introducing a bill which is called 
the Law Enforcement Trust Integrity Act of 2000.
  We would like to see a response from the entire Congress. This is a 
matter for the caring majority. All decent citizens should want to see 
to it that there are no further miscarriages of justice; all decent 
citizens who want to see to it that the rogue cops, the extremist 
elements of law enforcement, are isolated.
  Mr. Speaker, beyond that, we want to let it be known that we are 
going to organize and appeal to the United Nations that the pattern of 
the violations that exist throughout the entire Nation, which ranges 
from Amadou Diallo's killing to the Los Angeles Police Department's 
confessions of gross brutality and miscarriages of justice to the fact 
that we have 2 million people in prison, most of whom are minorities, 
to the police profiling of the New Jersey State troopers, on and on it 
goes.
  And we would like to raise this debate to a higher level and have the 
rest of the world look at the violations of human rights in America. 
Already Amnesty International has said that New York City has a pattern 
of police oppression which violates human rights.
  I would like to yield to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Towns) who 
is from the 10th Congressional District.
  Mr. TOWNS. Let me thank the gentleman for taking the time out. And I 
agree with the gentleman, this is something that needs to be done, and 
certain things need to be said.
  I would also like to congratulate and thank my colleague, the 
gentleman from New York (Mr. Meeks), for the work that he has done in 
the area of police brutality, because, as you know, throughout this 
Nation, the problem of police brutality is something that we must begin 
to address.
  I am really sad today. My heart is heavy, because when I think about 
what is happening in this Nation, even in the city that I am from, when 
I think about senior citizens, a lady 93 years old said to me that you 
cannot even trust the police.
  I think on that note, the police department should support the Law 
Enforcement Trust Act, because I think that the police officers that 
are on the force that are doing what is right should recognize that 
those that are doing things that are not right also creates a kind of 
negative stigma for the whole department and for policemen everywhere.
  I think that law enforcement authorities should support the Law 
Enforcement Trust Act. We have had too many situations where 
minorities, men of color and women of color, have been shot. You could 
call the roll.
  I mean, in New York I was just sitting there thinking in terms of 
Eleanor Bumpers, in terms of what happened to her, and Michael Griffin, 
then Randy Evans, I could go on and on, and, of course, Amadou Diallo.
  All of these are names of people that have been killed by the police 
department. And we have not done a whole lot to correct this over the 
years. We have too many people who you talk to who have horror stories 
about the police.
  You can talk to people on the street. People stop me all the time to 
tell me what happened to them. So profiling, let us face it, we might 
as well take our heads from out of the sand and from behind trees, and 
realize the fact that this is something that exists and let us now come 
together and work toward it.
  We need to make certain that we have a program put in place that is 
going to monitor these kinds of issues, because when you have people 
talking about it on a regular basis, even at church they talk about the 
kinds of things that the police department is doing.
  The people are now afraid of the police department, that is how bad 
things have gotten. And I think that those policemen of goodwill 
understand that and should now come forth and say yes, I really feel 
that something needs to be done, and it needs to be done now.
  The Justice Department I think now has to step in, because of the 
tactics that have been used by the unit, in terms of street gang units, 
street police units. I think that a street crime unit, the kind of 
tactics that they are using, I think that the Justice Department should 
take a look at it, because all of these people that I talk to cannot be 
wrong.
  If you just walk the streets of New York, in terms of the communities 
of color, they will tell you what the police are doing; how they were 
stopped and how they were asked all of these different questions. And 
the only reason that the person stopped them is because they happened 
to be of color.
  I think the time has come in the United States of America where we 
must address that. Now, I know that it is not all police officers, and 
I don't want to stand here and indict all of them; but I think it is 
enough for us to stop at this point in time and begin to address it.
  To the gentleman from New York (Mr. Meeks) and those who are having 
police brutality hearings around this Nation, I think that you must 
continue until the message is heard all over that something needs to be 
done, and that the things that are going on with the street crime unit 
and all of these things that people are complaining about must be 
addressed.
  I do believe that if we pay enough attention and we stop for a 
moment, we can do something about it. Too many

[[Page 1849]]

people have been left with tears as a result of what has happened with 
the police department. It is always ``I thought they had a this,'' ``I 
thought they had a that.''
  I mean, I can tell you about the story of Randy Evans. No weapon. 
Police officer just shot him.
  I think that we need to understand that we have to address those 
issues. We have to do it as quickly as possible.
  Let me close by saying simply this to my colleagues, the gentleman 
from New York (Mr. Owens), the gentleman from New York (Mr. Meeks), and 
the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers), who is also offering up the 
Law Enforcement Trust Act, I think the time has come to do that. I 
think that we can no longer afford the luxury of sitting back.
  I think when we go to the Justice Department, we need to go with a 
clear message, in fact, that the street crime unit must be 
investigated, that tactics must be investigated. This kind of stuff 
should not go on in a civilized society.
  So at this time I would like to yield back to the gentleman from New 
York (Mr. Owens) and say to him I really appreciate the work that he is 
doing.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from the 10th 
Congressional District in Brooklyn, New York (Mr. Towns). He mentioned 
Randolph Evans as an example of the police slaughter that has gone on 
over the last 30 years. Randolph Evans was a young man standing in a 
crowd on the grounds of a housing project. There was some kind of 
disturbance. The police officer walked up, he put a gun to his head, 
and shot him in front of a whole host of witnesses.
  There was no defense for that. So they came up with a defense at the 
trial that the police officer suffered from psychomotor epilepsy. 
Psychomotor epilepsy. I have never heard the term since then. But he 
was acquitted as a victim of psychomotor epilepsy. He had taken the 
life of a young man, and he was acquitted. This shows my colleagues why 
we were so outraged many years later to find 41 shots being fired at 
Amadou Diallo.
  The gentleman from the 10th Congressional District of Brooklyn and I 
also share another problem. In the New York Times yesterday there is a 
report of ``High Infant Mortality Rates In Brooklyn'' and how they 
mystify experts. In Brownsville, which is in my district, in Bedford-
Stuyvesant, which is mostly in the district of the gentleman from New 
York (Mr. Towns), there is an alarming increase in the number of babies 
who are dying at birth. While all across the Nation there seems to be a 
decrease, there is an alarming increase in these two communities. It so 
happens these two communities are communities that have the largest 
number of welfare recipients in New York City. The third community 
suffering also is in the Bronx, a large number of welfare recipients.
  The enforcement of the new Welfare Reform Act in New York City by 
Mayor Guiliani has been harsh and brutal. There is no mystery here. 
Mothers are suffering because of the harsh and brutal way in which the 
Welfare Reform Act is being implemented.
  They are suffering from the lack of care. They are suffering from the 
fact that it is more difficult to get housing. It is more difficult to 
get help for their children. They are suffering because there is not 
enough day care.
  So I started this discussion by saying that, whenever I come to the 
floor, I want to discuss the budget that we are getting ready to 
prepare, because the budget sets the tone for everything else we do and 
is important here in the House of Representatives.
  The budget will guide the discussion leading to the appropriations 
process. The way we spend money tells the world what we think is 
important. We must spend money on better health care for these 
youngsters so at the beginning of their lives they have a chance.
  We have a problem at the end, a problem with respect to young people 
like Amadou Diallo, Randolph Evans, and others. We do not want them to 
be cut down in the prime of their lives by irresponsible and reckless 
police officers. The rogue police officers, the extremist police 
officers must not be aided and abetted by the police department and the 
mayors and the governors and the judges. They must expose and isolate 
these rogue extremist elements within the application and law 
enforcement area throughout the Nation.
  Thomas Jefferson said, ``You have the right to life, liberty, and the 
pursuit of happiness.''
  I congratulated the Congress when we started. Today we took a great 
step forward. We moved the cap on the earnings of senior citizens. We 
recognize that a long life should be rewarded. Every step should be 
taken to make that long life as pleasant as possible. But at the end of 
life or in the middle or in the beginning, it is all important and 
equal amounts.
  We want to, all three of us, declare that for all those people in our 
districts and the rest of New York City and throughout the State and 
anywhere else in the country, we want to know what action you are going 
to take. We have told you we call for these demands to be met. We are 
appealing to the Justice Department to intervene.
  We are going to take the case in some form to the United Nations. 
There was a demonstration on Saturday before the United Nations. That 
is just a beginning, because there are gross violations of human rights 
throughout the entire Nation.
  We also are going to call for an activity and an action in which 
everybody can participate. We are going to call for an April week of 
caring majority nonviolent outrage. We had a day of outrage once in New 
York City. They know what that means. We are calling for an April week 
of caring majority nonviolent outrage where all of the citizens of New 
York, black and white, can express themselves. That effort will be 
followed by demands that the negotiations be met.
  In the last 40 years, more than 50 outrageous killings of New York 
City citizens by the police have gone unpunished. From the children, 
Clifford Glover, and Randolph Evans, to grandmother Eleanor Bumpers who 
was killed in her own living room, mental patient Gideon Bush, and 
immigrant Amadou Diallo, the careless actions of individual policemen 
have been supported and excused by a collaborating judicial system and 
by the establishment press and media, by the power brokers, and the 
governors of New York City.
  We declare that the caring majority of New York City will no longer 
surrender to these gross injustices. We are going to take action until 
they yield on our reasonable demands.
  Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record the article in the New York 
Times that appeared February 29, 2000, which talks about the ``High 
Infant Mortality Rates In Brooklyn Mystify Experts'' as follows:

                [From the New York Times, Feb. 29, 2000]

        High Infant Mortality Rates in Brooklyn Mystify Experts

                        (By Jennifer Steinhauer)

       In central Brooklyn--where storefronts are boarded, housing 
     projects stand in defiant opposition to the boom times, and 
     the hospitals are more or less broke--babies are dying at 
     rates that the city as a whole has not seen in nearly two 
     decades. And they die, in some cases, at a rate double what 
     the federal government has set as the infant mortality goal 
     for the nation.
       Often, they die months before they were meant to be born, 
     their bodies a tangle of minute bones and skin, weighed in 
     grams rather than pounds. Some never see their mother's 
     faces; they are gone right after birth. Others leave the 
     hospital with a shopping bag of drugs and a mother 
     overwhelmed by her own myriad problems, and do not make it to 
     their first birthday.
       While the infant mortality rate in New York has fallen 
     steadily in the last decade, it has fallen much more slowly 
     in neighborhoods like Bedford-Stuyvesant and Brownsville, 
     neighborhoods with considerable populations of new 
     immigrants.
       In New York City in 1988, babies less than a year old died 
     at a rate of 6.8 per 1,000 which is slightly better than the 
     national average, 7.2. Bedford-Stuyvesant, however, has one 
     of the highest rates in the country, 14 per 1,000, a 20 
     percent increase over 1997. The last time the average rate of 
     infant mortality was that high in New York City over all was 
     1983.
       That the number is on the rise at all is startling. It 
     stands against the national trend even in cities with severe 
     social problems, like Washington, where the rate is 12.5 per 
     1,000.
       In Brownsville, the story is much the same; the rate slides 
     up and down each year,

[[Page 1850]]

     averaging about 10 deaths per 1,000 babies in the last five 
     years. While the disparity between children of black and 
     white mothers has always been stark, there is evidence that 
     the gap is closing elsewhere in the city. The infant 
     mortality rate in the Tremont section of the Bronx, for 
     example, is 8.1, a 54 percent decrease from 1988.
       The figures have so concerned the city's health 
     commissioner, Dr. Neal L. Cohen, that he has made reducing 
     infant mortality one of his top priorities for this year.
       There seems to be no clear answer to why the same 
     neighborhoods stand out year after year, and why some would 
     buck the downward trends. Experts seem to agree that even 
     when the resources exist--prenatal care at low cost, 
     hospitals willing to deliver babies, government-subsidized 
     infant formula and food--it is still profoundly difficult to 
     get many pregnant women through the doors.
       ``It is perplexing question,'' said Dr. Katherine La 
     Guardia, who runs the ambulatory obstetrics and gynecology 
     clinic at Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center in 
     Brownsville. ``A huge amount of effort has gone into 
     improving prenatal care, but we still don't know how one 
     reaches the most unreachable.''
       Those are the mothers who are addicted to drugs, who are 
     H.I.V. positive, unemployed or living in New York as illegal 
     immigrants. Women who fit those descriptions often avoid 
     going to see doctors before they give birth out of fear, 
     experts said, that their babies will be taken from them or 
     that they will be deported. Others are discouraged by family 
     members, who do not believe in prenatal care or are 
     suspicious of the entire medical system.
       ``The question is, how do we make women less afraid to get 
     care,`` Dr. La Guardia said.
       Other mothers want prenatal care but cannot get it because 
     they live too far from a health clinic or hospital, or have 
     small children and no one at home to care for them while they 
     make the trek to the doctor.
       There are also anomalies that cannot be readily explained. 
     For instance, neighborhoods with a high concentration of 
     immigrants from the Caribbean seem to report the highest 
     infant mortality figures. ``What is interesting about Bedford 
     is that 42.1 percent of the women are foreign-born,'' said 
     Dr. Tanya Pagan Paggio, an associate professor of medicine at 
     the City University of New York.
       ``This is important because when you look at other places 
     in the city where there is a high level of foreign-born, 
     infant mortality rates are closer to 6 percent,'' Dr. Paggio 
     said. ``In Bedford, there are a lot of Caribbean people. And 
     we know that Jamaican women have a 9.4 per 1,000 rate, 
     Haitian women have about 11 per 1,000 and rates among women 
     from Trinidad and Tobago are also high. You have to wonder if 
     these women have access to service they need.''
       Robin Bennett is desperate not to let her baby become 
     another sad statistic. At 23, she is pregnant with her fourth 
     child, a baby with a heart condition. One son is in foster 
     care, and the other lives with her mother. Her daughter, who 
     is 18 months old, lives with Ms. Bennett in a government-
     subsidized apartment in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
       Her problems are as complicated as they are numerous: her 
     apartment is full of bugs that bite her baby, she said, 
     adding that one of her children was a result of a rape. Her 
     mother, who has AIDS, is her main line of support.
       ``Sometimes I cry at night because I wonder if the stress 
     in my life gave this baby her hole in her heart,'' Ms. 
     Bennett said. She finds herself gravitating to Brooklyn 
     Perinatal Network, an organization that tries to keep babies 
     like Ms. Bennett's from dying by shepherding women into 
     prenatal care, advocating for them on housing issues and 
     giving other social support.
       In fact, a lack of access to housing, nutritious food and 
     adult support may contribute to infant mortality as much as 
     poor medical care, many experts say.
       ``Prenatal care has probably been overstated,'' said Dawn 
     Misra, an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins School of 
     Public Health and an expert on infant mortality. ``If you 
     look at a program like Healthy Start, you see it is a broader 
     initiative with resources like food, social support and other 
     things like smoking cessation clinics, which is import 
     because smoking may lead to low-birth-weight babies, and low 
     birth weight is the leading cause of infant mortality.''
       When Bedford-Stuyvesant lost a majority of its financing in 
     1997 for Healthy Start, a federal program intended to help 
     poor women have healthy babies, the infant mortality rate 
     shot up, said Ngosi Moses, who runs the Brooklyn Perinatal 
     Network. `'When resources became scarce, those rates rose,'' 
     Ms. Ngosi said. ``This shows you when money is put into the 
     community, good things happen, and when the money is pulled 
     out, they go out.''
       The $6.8 million that was spread over 22 programs in the 
     early 1990's now has to cover 94 programs.
       Brownsville is a neighborhood that a decade of economic 
     expansion seems to have left untouched, where Healthy Start 
     does not even exist. Rows of private homes are boarded up, 
     and stores are scarce, save for a few of the dollar-bin 
     variety.
       The number of people, especially women, who are infected 
     with the AIDS virus is ``astonishing,'' Dr. La Guardia said.
       In most hospitals in the city, it is almost a given that a 
     mother will leave the maternity ward with a healthy baby in 
     her arms. In Brownsville, it is often just short of a 
     victory.
       Dr. La Guardia and her boss, Dr. Martin Gimovsky, who heads 
     the obstetrics department at Brookdale, spend their days 
     trying to unravel the histories and medical problems of the 
     poor women who come through its clinics and labor and 
     delivery floor each day. Many have never had a day of 
     prenatal care.
       On a recent Wednesday afternoon, during Dr. Gimovsky's 
     clinic for women with high-risk pregnancies, dozens of women 
     crammed into a waiting room. Almost all of them had had 
     children before, including the recently homeless woman with 
     AIDS who did not know her due date and had had virtually no 
     prenatal care.
       ``You've gained weight,'' the resident said reassuringly.
       ``Well, I'm living somewhere now, so I am much more 
     relaxed,'' said the woman, who would not give her name.
       Cynthia Martinez, who has three children and is pregnant 
     with a fourth, still calls her first baby, the one who was 
     stillborn, by her name, Cynthia Michelle. ``She is 10 now,'' 
     she said. The baby stopped moving at 7 months, and by the 
     time Ms. Martinez delivered her, the doctors told her she was 
     dead.
       Distraught, Ms. Martinez said that she grabbed the baby of 
     the woman she shared a room with when it was brought in for a 
     feeding and refused to let her go. ``I just kept saying, `You 
     can't take this baby from me,'' Ms. Martinez, 24, said, ``I 
     guess I thought she was mine. My mother told me that God had 
     taken one from me but would give me more.''
       Few patients at Brookdale, one of the city's most 
     financially strained hospitals, pay the full price of their 
     care, if they pay at all. Many are covered by the Prenatal 
     Care Assistance Program, a state-financed program for poor 
     pregnant women.
       ``We work with the patients no one wants,'' said Dr. 
     Gimovsky, a plump and congenial doctor, who jokes easily with 
     the teenage girls who fill the cramped clinic space. He 
     recruited Dr. La Guardia by likening her work to that of the 
     Peace Corps. ``You don't make any money at this,'' he said 
     cheerfully, ``but this is what I want to do with my life.''
       Although the infant mortality rates in Brownsville are 
     historically lower than in Bedford-Stuyvesant, the March of 
     Dimes earmarked the neighborhood for a $152,000 program to 
     try to get more services to women. It is also pushing 
     legislators in Albany to raise the maximum income women may 
     earn and still qualify for prenatal care.
       Dr. La Guardia has been at Brookdale for only a few months. 
     Unlike Dr. Gimovsky, she is businesslike, almost stern, and 
     deeply weary over the hospital's dire fiscal situation.
       ``I am still in shock,'' she said. Money would permit the 
     hiring of more doctors and nurses. Ultrasound machines, 
     standard equipment in any Manhattan obstetrics office, are 
     scarce. A portable ultrasound, the latest in technology, is 
     unheard of.
       ``Clearly, there are more dollars that need to be funneled 
     into this area,'' Dr. La Guardia said. ``You wonder if there 
     is any hope.''

                          ____________________