MICHAEL O. ALLEN

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Abner Louima

Living ‘Black’ in the United States of America

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And living to tell the tales.

Traffic was heavy on Route 17 in Hasbrouck Heights on my way home to Ridgewood, NJ, after work on Wednesday, which wasn’t exactly news. But, as I approached a stretch where Route 46 and Interstate 80 go over Route 17, traffic eased and I saw the reason why. Rubbernecking motorists.

What were they looking at?

A black man with both hands on top of his head standing in front of a white police officer on the grassy area next to the shoulder. The cop’s car, lights flashing, and another car in front of it were parked on the shoulder. Unlike Alton Sterling on Tuesday or Philando Castile on Wednesday, this black man stopped by a white cop was still alive.

James Eagan Holmes, heavily armed, killed 12 and injured 70 people in a Colorado theater and was captured alive. Dylann Roof killed nine churchgoers in South Carolina and was captured alive. Jason Dalton killed six and injured two in Kalamazoo. His life was preserved as he was being arrested.

Cedric Chatman. Tamir Rice. Laquan McDonald. Eric Garner. Michael Brown. Black men make up 6% of U.S. population; are 40% of people killed by police.

He’s lucky to be alive, I thought as I drove on. Was that too sanguine a response to the situation?

Jesse Williams Speaking out

I am not taking the situation lightly. I’ve lived long enough to be a middle-aged black male despite too many tangles with cops, both in the United States of America and elsewhere, to do that. But, as these killings pile up, becoming more and more common each day, I’ve long realized that I’ve been lucky to still be alive to tell tales of encounters with cops.

My narrow escape from racist Afrikaners in 1994, while on assignment for the New York Daily News in South Africa, is an entirely different story that will be told a different day. Not today. Also, it’s available on the Internet for anyone curious enough to want to find out.

St. Louis, MO in the ’80’s

A police car pulled up behind my car as I eased into traffic after a college friend and I left a bar late one night many years ago. He pulled me over. The cop came up to the car, peered in, then instructed me to step out. I did. He said that he had stopped me for suspected drunk driving because he had observed me weaving in and out of traffic. I protested that I did no such thing and that, in any case, I couldn’t be drunk driving since I had not been drinking.

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July 9, 2016
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Volpe’s Return Spurs Angry Blast

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

Sunday, September 7, 1997

by MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writer

Lawyers for alleged police torture victim Abner Louima yesterday criticized city officials for allowing the central suspect in the 70th Precinct scandal to return to police duty.

Officer Justin Volpe, accused of sodomizing Louima with a stick, will return to modified duty this week. That means he has been stripped of his gun and badge, and will work at a desk job.

Under civil service law, cops cannot be suspended without pay for more than 30 days.

“It is shocking, it is unfair, it is morally unacceptable that while Abner Louima continues to languish in his hospital bed, the man who stands indicted for putting him there can be allowed to return to business as usual,” said Vladimir Rodney, a spokesman for the Haitian-American Alliance.

The Rev. Al Sharpton and Carl Thomas, Louima’s lead attorney, said that Mayor Giuliani and Police Commissioner Howard Safir should have taken steps to prevent the return of the officers, and that they should not hide behind provisions of the police union contract.

September 7, 1997
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Don’t Sell Cops Short, Says Rudy

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Sunday, August 31, 1997

by MICHAEL O. ALLEN and PAUL SCHWARTZMAN, Daily News Staff Writers

A day after thousands protesting police brutality marched on City Hall, Mayor Giuliani yesterday sought to refocus attention on cops’ accomplishments while his chief rival took the day off.

Eleven days before the Democratic primary, front-runner Ruth Messinger spent the day out of sight with her family, while opponents Sal Albanese and the Rev. Al Sharpton reached for votes in Harlem, Brooklyn and Queens.

Of the Democratic candidates, only Sharpton invoked the rally and the alleged police torture on Abner Louima, as he has since the reports of the incident first surfaced three weeks ago.

Greeting a cheering Latino crowd in Red Hook, Brooklyn, Giuliani said it was time for the public to cease castigating cops.

“Yesterday, over a 24-hour period, there was one murder in New York City,” Giuliani said. “That didn’t happen because the Police Department aren’t doing its job.

“They are saving lives in New York City while some people have been spending time excessively bashing them. That’s a big mistake. That has to stop.”

Giuliani also praised the cops for enduring during Friday’s demonstration a torrent of curses and taunts that they are racists and Nazis.

“That’s a lot of people who are calling you names, rushing up towards you, using words like Nazis and fascists — things that should just not be said,” he said, adding that the cops’ restraint showed that they are the “finest police department” in the country.

Although protesters castigated Giuliani during the march — at which Messinger, Sharpton and former Mayor David Dinkins spoke — one political analyst said the mayor would not suffer politically from the event.

“The real story — that the police and the marchers were able to maintain civility — is a plus for him,” said Mitchell Moss, director of the Taub Urban Research Center at New York University.

Approaching the final week before the Sept. 9 primary, Messinger today plans to speak at a Brooklyn church service and campaign in Riverdale. Yesterday, she was nowhere to be found.

“She is spending it with her family,” said campaign spokesman Lee Jones, adding that it was the Manhattan borough president’s last chance for a respite before “eight weeks of solid fun and games with Uncle Rudy.”

Sharpton, for his part, sought to seize on the protest’s aftermath to attack Giuliani at a rally of approximately 200 supporters in Harlem.

“It gives people the idea that he can’t deal with issues other than his own pat issues,” Sharpton said afterward. “He can’t deal with unemployment, he can’t deal with schools and he can’t deal with police brutality. He’s a good law enforcement guy, but that’s the end of it.”

Touring Queens, Albanese said, when asked, that he hopes Friday’s demonstration focuses attention on what he said was Giuliani’s failure to deal with police brutality.

“You can’t lay the [Louima] incident at his doorstep,” he said, “but everyone is focusing on abuse. It focuses attention on the department and how it has addressed abuse.”

August 31, 1997
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Plungers Waved In Angry March

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

Sunday, August 17, 1997

by MICHAEL O. ALLEN, CAROLINA GONZALEZ and PAUL SCHWARTZMAN, Daily News Staff Writers

Brandishing toilet plungers and chanting “KKK must go!” thousands of angry protesters yesterday descended on Brooklyn’s 70th Precinct, where two cops have been charged with torturing a Haitian immigrant.

Pressed tightly against a line of cops standing behind police barricades, the mostly Haitian crowd jammed the street outside the Flatbush stationhouse where two cops, Justin Volpe and Charles Schwarz, allegedly beat Abner Louima before shoving a toilet plunger into his rectum last week.

Louima watched the demonstration from the intensive care unit at Brooklyn Hospital Center, where he is recovering.

Louima “felt very good that people are upset about what happened and that they were making their voices heard,” his lawyer Carl Thomas said.

As temperatures steamed into the mid-90s, the raucous crowd swelled to 4,000, with many pounding drums, dancing, and hoisting Haitian flags and plungers in the air in a racially charged, sometimes carnival-like scene.

Despite scattered skirmishes, no one was arrested in the tense stand-off as police brass took pains to adopt a conciliatory tone, even as many in the crowd chanted, “Pig,” “Shame on you,” and, “Seven-O, KKK.”

Someone from the crowd lobbed an empty water bottle, hitting a police officer in the eye. The officer was not hurt, but as a precaution, six officers were stationed on the rooftop of a one-story building across the street from the stationhouse.

The bottle throwing occurred around 7 p.m. after a late afternoon storm reduced the crowd to about 75.

During the height of the protest, marchers also shouted racial epithets and taunted the officers by waving the plungers in their faces.

“It’s Giuliani Time,” read one demonstrator’s sign, a reference to Louima’s claim that the cops told him, “This is Giuliani time, not Dinkins time” as they beat him.

Another sign displayed a photograph of Volpe with horns protruding from his head, accompanied by a caption that read, “Devil in a Blue Suit.”

Assistant Police Chief Patrick Brennan said the demonstrators “are mad as hell, and they have the right to be.”

“They want to get the most out of their demonstration, and who can blame them?” he asked.

Deputy Police Chief Wilbur Chapman conceded that the torture incident has “fractured” the community’s fragile relationship with the police. But he said the precinct’s new commander, Inspector Raymond Diaz, would “work hard to restore the faith.”

“One particularly horrific incident doesn’t negate all the terrific work that has been done,” Chapman said.

But that was not a sentiment held by many in the crowd, which began gathering in the morning outside Club Rendez-Vous, the Flatbush nightclub where Louima’s fracas with cops began early Aug. 9.

“In Haiti we went through all these things,” said Marie Toussaint, 36. “It’s a shock to find the same thing going on in the United States.”

Roy Sargent, 55, a former Flatbush resident, said he drove to the march from his home in Piscataway, N.J., because he wanted to be counted among the voices expressing outrage.

“We put the Police Department in uniform to serve and protect us, and this is what they’re going to do us?” he asked incredulously. “This has to stop.”

Others vowed to protest in front of the stationhouse every day.

The Rev. Al Sharpton spoke to the smaller crowd assembled at the precinct stationhouse.

“We’re not against the police; we’re against police brutality,” Sharpton told the demonstrators.

Standing nearby, Jonas Louima, 25, Abner Louima’s brother, said he hoped that the restless crowds would remain peaceful.

“I don’t want fights,” he said. “I want people to express what they feel without violence.”

Louima’s friend, Ian Joseph, said the steps taken by Police Commissioner Howard Safir to punish cops in the precinct did not send a strong enough message that brutality is unacceptable.

“They shift one and the other, but before they start firing people it won’t change,” he said. “If the cops had to live among us, they might fear that we might see them the next day, and it would be very different.”

Original Story Date: 08/17/97

August 17, 1997
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