Support the NYPD

Gee, wouldn't you love to be a cop, right now? Every single day you risk your life protecting and defending people you don't even know. And sometimes they hate you for it.

When you avert a crime, catch a criminal, or take enemy fire, the New York Times doesn't run endless panegyrics venerating you. But if you ever make a mistake--even an honest mistake, a reasonable mistake, a mistake anyone could have made, not to be confused with a Bill Clinton "personal mistake" like committing perjury-your name may become a household word akin to "Hitler," and your life will be ruined.

In a case now being treated as a classic illustration of the evils of "racial profiling" (at least by police experts such as Al Sharpton) over 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 Cops Cared

The rapist was not only prolific, but vicious. He often beat and robbed his victimsblack and Hispanic women between the ages of 13 and 53. He typically raped them at gunpoint, and raped 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 Uve" for two weeks straight. Al Sharpton wasn't demanding that the federal government intervene to bring this monster to justice. And there were no celebrity acts of civil disobedience raging for weeks on end.

Ineed, the serial rapist might have contin ued 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 the rapist in the 43rd Precinct, where a number of the rapes had occurred. Their wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters were not in any danger from this particular rapist, since 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 man whom they said was acting suspiciously and whom they believed might be the rapist. In a series of tragic misunderstandings, an innocent man, Amadou Diallo, ended up dead.

According the to policemen's testimonybelieved 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 backwards off a step, leading his partners to believe he had been shot by Dialo.

The reason everyone knows what happened that night in February, is that the New York Times alone has run over 700 articles on it.

Two months later, in April 1999, the police finally apprehended the rapist who had been terrorizing poor minority neighborhoods for six years. They caught him trying to sell jewelry he had stolen from one of his victims to a pawnbroker in the Bronx. A search of his car and home turned up yet more jewelry from the victims-as well as a cache of fire power, including 9-millimeter 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 ajob. 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: Over 700 articles on the cops' miserable mistake that night in February.

But the policemen who mistook Diallo for an armed rapist aren't just facing a bad press problem. They are also guaranteed several years of horrifying legal proceedings in which they will be forced to defend themselves from repeated accusations that they murdered Diallo. All because of a mistake that took four seconds of their lives-a reasonable mistake according to the jury-while on a dangerous, thankless mission to protect the lives and bodily integrity of people regardless of their color.

The cops have already been tried for murder-not mere involuntary manslaughter, but intentional murder. Alas, it seems the first murder prosecution was not duly rigged for the cop-haters. Consequently, community activists like Al Sharpton have gone to the U.S. Department of Justice to demand a second criminal prosecution by the federal government.