Diallo case leads to reform demands
■ The four acquitted
officers could face federal
charges.
NEW YORK (AP) - New demands
for social justice, law enforcement
reforms and a federal inquiry echoed
from pulpits and city streets Sunday in
the aftermath of the acquittal of four
police officers in the shooting death of
Amadou Diallo.
More than 1,000 people joined a
peaceful prayer vigil outside the United
Nations, where activist Rev. A1
Sharpton hoped to bring the Diallo case
to international attention.
The shooting victim “could have
been one of these ambassadors,” said
Sharpton, who also said he was “calling
for another jury to hear evidence” on
the policies of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.
“Come November, the jury is going
to render its decision,” he said, referring
to Giuliani’s probable run for the U.S.
Senate against first lady Hillary
Rodham Clinton.
Some in the crowd wore signs read
ing: “Go ahead and shoot. I’m black so
it must be justified.”
In what was billed as a day of prayer,
political leaders and activists joined
Sharpton in criticizing the verdicts as
inappropriate for a case in which police
fired 41 bullets and hit the West African
immigrant 19 times, only to discover
afterward that he was unarmed.
The four officers, acquitted of sec
ond-degree murder and lesser charges
by a jury in Albany on Friday, still face a
departmental inquiry and possibly fed
eral charges if Attorney General Janet
Reno finds evidence that Diallo’s civil
rights were violated.
Sharpton’s National Action
Network is investigating what compa
nies contribute money to the
Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association,
which helped finance the defense of the
four officers in the case. ,,
Later this week, Sharpton will
release names of the companies and
will ask citizens to boycott the firms,
said his spokeswoman, Rachel
Noerdlinger.
At St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Auxiliary
Bishop James McCarthy, filling in for
an ailing Cardinal John O’Connor, told
parishioners Diallo’s death should
cause people to “re-examine our own
tendencies toward violence, toward fear
and, perhaps, toward prejudice - racial
prejudice at that.”
City Council Speaker Peter Vallone,
speaking at Harlem’s Bethel AME
church, said that to make sure Diallo’s
death was not in vain, the police depart
ment needed to continue to make “fun
damental, meaningful change, so that
people aren’t afraid that the police are
going to shoot them.”
Norman Siegel, executive director
of the New York Civil Liberties Union,
told 200 parishioners at a
Congregational church in Queens that
the Diallo case was giving new impetus
to his group’s proposals for police mis
conduct reform.
The key provisions of the reforms
would make federal and state funding
for local police contingent upon police
meeting strict performance standards in
community relations and would name a
permanent special prosecutor to handle
police brutality incidents.
In addition to seeking a criminal
investigation to determine whether
Diallo’s civil rights were violated,
Siegel said the NYCLU intends to sue
the city on grounds that poor*training
and racial stereotyping led to the shoot
ing.
Hillary Rodham Clinton urged
New Yorkers not to let the verdict divide
them. She said the case underscores the
need for a police force reflective of the
city’s ethnic diversity and for “commu
nity policing.”
Whatever the result of a Justice
Department inquiry, “we must reach
across those lines of mistrust and divi
sion and join to ensure that no tragedy
like this ever happens again to anyone’s
son or daughter,” she told several hun
dred people at a national conference of
Dominican-Americans at City College
of New York.
Boeing strike continues
after failed negotiations
Number of youths
in prison doubles
SEATTLE (AP) - Boeing engi
neers were back on the picket lines
Sunday after contract negotiations
between the company and their
union broke down and a federal
mediator left town.
No further talks were scheduled,
and engineers and technical workers
promised to keep picketing until a
new contract agreement is reached.
At least 17,000 workers
remained on strike over Jhe week
- end. The workers walked off the job
Feb. 9.
The three offers Boeing has
made show little movement, union
officials said.
Talks between The Boeing Co.
and the Society for Professional
Engineering Employees in
Aerospace (SPEEA) broke down
Saturday, and C. Richard Barnes, the
nation’s top federal mediator, left
town shortly thereafter.
“We kind of figured this might
happen,” said Geoff Lawrey, a soft
ware engineer and 12-year Boeing
veteran picketing in front of compa
ny^ headquarters Sunday. “It
would’ve been nice (to have an
agreement), but nobody seriously
thought it would happerr.”
Boeing spokesman Peter Conte
said Sunday: “We came to the table
with what we thought were viable
alternatives. We thought SPEEA’s
counter-proposal was not viable.”
SPEEA negotiators had sought
more guaranteed pay raises and
bonuses similar to those received by
the larger Machinists union. Boeing
has insisted on mostly selective pay
increases, reductions in life insur
ance benefits and increased health
insurance premiums for employees.
While Boeing did not offer guar
anteed bonuses, it did offer employ
ee stock options. But the engineers
on the picket line - many of whom
know fellow technologists in
Seattle’s high-tech workforce - said
the options offer was nearly mean
ingless.
The union said Boeing’s latest
offer this weekend was very close to
its original offer on Nov. 11, which
was near-unanimously voted down.
The second offer, which was turned
down by a slim margin, was made
Jan. 13.
SPEEA contracts cover 22,600
employees in the Seattle area,
California and Kansas, though the
union has only about 64 percent of
those workers as members.
Conte confirmed that Boeing
has started to hire short-term con
tract workers to take over engineer
ing and technical functions until the
strike is resolved. He did not know
how many contractor replacements
had been hired.
The company delivered three
more aircraft to customers on
Friday, bringing the total deliveries
up to nine since the strike began Feb.
9. In 1999, Boeing delivered 47 air
craft in the month of February.
Rain Breezy, showers
high 60, low 40 high 54, low 33
WASHINGTON (AP) - The
number of criminals under 18 serving
time in adult prisons more than dou
bled between 1985 and 1997 as states
steadily prosecuted more young peo
ple as adults.
By 1997, 7,400 youths 17 or
younger were committed to adult
prisons on conviction in either juve
nile or adult courts. That’s more than
twice the 3,400 young people sent to
the nation’s state prisons in 1985, a
new Justice Department report
shows.
Seven in 10 young offenders who
received adult punishment in 1997,
the latest year state prison records
were available, were convicted for
violent offenses. Of that total, 37 per
cent were jailed for robbery, 13 per
cent for murder and 13 percent for
aggravated assault, according to the
report released Sunday.
Researchers say the young
inmates by no means are overrunning
the prisons’ adult population of 2 mil
lion, and just 5 percent of all young
offenders punished in this country
serve .sentences in adult facilities. But
data suggest that today’s violent
young offenders are more likely to do
prison time than in years past.
I v;* That’s partly because of an
increasing number of state laws that
take away their legal status as minors
and make them more accountable,
researchers say. The crackdown,
fueled in part by high-profile school
violence, has placed children as
young as 11 on trial in criminal
courts.
“Many states have increased the
number of provisions that allow juve
niles to be handled in the adult sys
tem,” said report author Kevin J.
Strom, a researcher with the depart
ment’s Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Based on state prison records
Nel^raskan
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THE DAILY NEBRASKAN
Editor: Josh Funk
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Many states have
increased the
number of
provisions that
allow juveniles to
be handled in the
adult system.”
Kevin J. Strom
researcher, Bureau of Justice Statisitcs
reported annually to the Justice
Department, the report notes that
while 37 states and the District of
Columbia consider 18-years-olds
adults for criminal purposes, most
also allow “certain categories of
offenders under 18 to be incarcerated
in adult prisons and housed with
older inmates.”
The inmate data do not specify
whether young offenders are convict
ed in juvenile or adult courts, but
Strom said it is known that a small
percentage go from the juvenile
courts to adult incarceration.
The Justice Department study
comes amid debate over the merits of
meting out adult time for crimes com
mitted by youths.
Historically, young offenders’
fates mostly were decided by juvenile
judges. But after a spate of drug-gang
violence and school shootings in the
last decade, state lawmakers decided
adult prisons could deal more effec
tively with violent or chronic youth
offenders.
Since 1992, 30 states and the
District of Columbia have passed
laws that in certain instances send
young people directly to criminal
court.
Through 1998, despite a 50 per
cent drop in the juvenile murder
arrest rate, states gave criminal prose
cutors increased power to bypass the
century-old juvenile system or
chipped away at options juvenile
judges had for trying youth cases.
Youngsters’ yearly admissions to
prison climbed steadily between
1986 and 1995, then leveled off, the
report said. Over the years, more
youths were imprisoned relative to
the number arrested. In 1997, 33
youths were sent to prison for every
1,000 arrests for violent crimes, up
from the 18 imprisoned per 1,000 in
1985.
■ Nebraska
Student receives minor
burns in dormitory fire
KEARNEY (AP) - A female
student who lit a candle during a
midnight power outage and then fell
asleep suffered minor bums in a fire
Friday at a University of Nebraska
at Kearney dormitory.
Firefighters were called to the
Centennial Towers West at 3:44 a.m.
to a fire in a room on the seven-story
building’s top floor, Volunteer Fire
Department administrator Ken
Tracy said.
A lit candle in the room appar
ently blew over into a container
holding paper and plastic, Tracy
said.
The student woke up, attempted
to douse the fire with a small trash
can of water and then sounded the
building’s fire alarm.
The fire was extinguished with
in five minutes. Damage was mini
mal.
■ California
Two die in crash involving
stolen ambulance
ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP) - An
ambulance stolen from a hospital
parking lot ran a red light at high
speed and plowed into a car, killing
two people, police said
The woman driving the ambu
lance was “apparently disoriented
and obviously not an employee of
the ambulance company,” Sgt. Joe
Vargas said.
The ambulance had been taken
from Anaheim Memorial Hospital,
about a mile from the site of
Saturday’s crash. The driver was
wearing a hospital identification
bracelet, but it was unclear whether
she was a patient, Vargas said
The woman driving the ambu
lance was taken to Western Medical
Center. She is expected to be arrest
ed and booked for investigation of
grand theft of a vehicle, Vargas said.
■Mexico
Tijuana police chief shot, L
killed while driving car v'
TIJUANA, Mexico (AP) -
Assailants shot and killed Tijuana's
police chief Sunday, pumping more
than 100 shots into his car as tie
drove along a busy highway.
Alfredo de la Torre, in charge of
the police force in the violent border
town since 1998, was pronounced
dead at the scene, a spokesman said.
Torre was attacked as he drove i
home from Mass, unaccompanied j.
by his bodyguards, the spokesman j
said.
Riddled with bullet holes, his i
black Chevy Suburban with tinted
windows crashed into a palm tree
on ttie side of the road, the
spokesman said.
Government news agency
Notimex reported that there were
four assailants, but no arrests have
been made.
■ Mozambique
Flooded African rivers
leave more than 30 dead
SAVE RIVER VALLEY,
Mozambique (AP) - Helicopters
plucked more than 1,500 people to
safety Sunday as swollen rivers
swept away almost everything in
their paths in flood-ravaged
Mozambique.
Many more people gripped
whatever high ground they could
find as waters continued to rise in
the Save and Limpopo rivers of this
southeast African country, one of
the poorest in the world. TTiey have
been stranded for a week and des
perately need food.
Various reports estimated
between 5,000 and 10,000 people
are stranded, and more than 30 have
died.