Friday, May 04, 2001
Public Advocate Mark Green urged the city yesterday to establish educational programs for firefighting at two high schools and two community colleges to increase the number of minority group members in the FDNY.
In a city where minority groups now represent the majority of the population, the Fire Department remains overwhelmingly white and male.
Mark Green at yesterday’s press conference on minorities in the FDNY
In a letter to Fire Commissioner Thomas Von Essen, Green, a Democratic mayoral hopeful, released statistics showing that blacks and Latinos make up 7% of the FDNY, as compared with 40% in Los Angeles’ fire department, 29% in Chicago and 30% in Philadelphia.
In 1999, blacks and Latinos accounted for 22% of those who took the firefighter exam and 18% of those who passed.
Green also said more needs to be done to increase the number of women in the department.
Currently, women represent less than 1% of the FDNY workforce.
The city “needs to create a pipeline of qualified minority and women applicants,” he said.
“The best way to permanently change the applicant pool is … to create at least two citywide high schools for fire sciences and a minimum of two fire science programs at CUNY,” Green added.
Mayor Giuliani’s office had no comment. In another development yesterday, about 30 demonstrators rallied outside FDNY headquarters in downtown Brooklyn to oppose firefighter candidate Police Officer Edward McMellon.
A handful of Muslim firefighters and their supporters oppose the possible hiring of McMellon because he was one of four cops who gunned down unarmed African immigrant Amadou Diallo in his Bronx vestibule in February 1999.
“Why does the fire commissioner want to hire McMellon to become a firefighter and save lives after he took my son’s life?” Diallo’s father, Saikou, said at the rally.
The group also demanded that the department hire a Muslim chaplain. FDNY Islamic Society President Kevin James noted that the agency has two Jewish, two Protestant and three Catholic chaplains, but no Muslims.
Sunday, April 29, 2001
Amadou Diallo’s parents expressed anguish yesterday over the Police Department’s exoneration of the four cops who killed their son, and urged supporters to “refuse to lose hope.”
“Whoever said [the cops] have done nothing wrong, they are wrong,” said Diallo’s mother, Kadiatou. “I am saying to Mayor Giuliani the decision is wrong, I am saying to the police commissioner the decision is wrong … let’s make changes to prevent this from happening again.”
Amadou Diallo’s parents speak out at Al Sharpton’s Harlem headquarters.
Kadiatou and Saikou Diallo flanked the Rev. Al Sharpton at his Harlem headquarters to denounce Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik’s decision Friday to put the cops back on the job — without guns or badges, but without punishment — based on the findings of two police panels that deemed the fatal shooting of the unarmed man a mistake.
“They are letting the police go free to kill and kill,” Saikou Diallo said.
Sharpton announced plans to compile a record of incidents of racial profiling, arbitrary stop-and-frisks and other interaction between cops and minority groups to build a civil class-action suit against the NYPD.
He also said the black community will target an unnamed major corporation that supports the police union.
Sharpton derided Fire Commissioner Thomas Von Essen for approving one of the cops, Edward McMellon, as a firefighter candidate and promised to protest at FDNY headquarters in Brooklyn.
“This week we will prepare for a huge visit to the Fire Department,” Sharpton said.
Meanwhile, Giuliani reiterated support for Kerik’s decision.
“The reality of the Diallo case is that it was tragic and horrible,” the mayor said on John Gambling’s WABC radio show.
“A mixed jury of four blacks and eight whites concluded that. As did the Clinton Justice Department, when they decided not to pursue a civil rights case. And that’s what the police panel concluded.
“All these people can’t be wrong. … You have to willing to adjust your attitude in the face of reality.”
With Michael O. Allen
Sunday, December 19, 1999
The Rev. Al Sharpton’s efforts to recruit people for “Amadou’s Army” – a group of New Yorkers who will go to Albany for the Amadou Diallo murder trial – got an unexpected boost yesterday from Winnie Mandela.
Mandela, the South African anti-apartheid activist and former wife of Nelson Mandela, arrived at Sharpton’s Harlem headquarters unannounced to support the effort.
“It’s wonderful that, as we stand here and fight for a child from Africa, Amadou Diallo, the queen from Africa and everywhere else would make a surprise appearance,” Sharpton said.
“Amandla! Amandla!,” Mandela, her right fist up in the air, said, chanting the Zulu word for power and a rallying cry of the anti-apartheid movement.
“In South Africa, they used the police to carry out their racist laws, but out of that was born a progressive police movement,” Mandela said. “They did exactly what you are doing here.”
The gathering was for Sharpton’s weekly radio show, at the end of which about 200 people attending were asked to sign up to attend the trial at its new venue in Albany.
State appeals court judges stunned the city Thursday when they moved the trial to Albany from the Bronx, ruling that the four cops charged in the Feb. 4 killing of Diallo could not get a fair trial by jury in the Bronx.
Saikou Diallo, Amadou’s father, said his son’s rights would be diminished by the trial being moved to Albany and called for the federal government to take over the case.
Sharpton said the signup would mobilize the same multiracial group that protested in front of city Police Headquarters in lower Manhattan in the shooting’s aftermath.
“If the cops involved in the shooting think they’ve gotten away with something by having the case moved to Albany, they should check out Justin Volpe’s new address,” Sharpton said, calling for a rally Tuesday to urge prosecutors in the case to seek federal intervention.