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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the June 29, 2000
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------NYPD blues
Springsteen vs. cop racism
By John Catalinotto
New York
The U.S. Commission on Human Rights has charged the New York Police Department with using "rac
ial profiling" to stop and question people. According to a report issued June 16 by an advisory panel of the USCHR, this tactic is a factor in racial tensions that can lead to "tragic and unnecessary" incidents like the February 1998 shooting of Guinean immigrant Amadou Diallo in the Bronx.
President Bill Clinton was forced to appoint the panel after mass protests and civil disobedience shook New York in the wake of Diallo's death.
While the panel was making it findings public, the NYPD was expressing outrage over a new Bruce Springsteen song aired at an Atlanta concert for the first time on June 4. The song is subtitled "41 shots"--obviously about the shooting of Diallo, although it doesn't mention him by name.
A jury in Albany, N.Y., earlier this year acquitted the four cops who shot Diallo. But few in the South Bronx believes the police story that the shooting was justified.
The lyrics of Springsteen's song simply describe an overall atmosphere that makes contact with the police dangerous for people of color in this country.
Springsteen is a popular rock singer who first rose to stardom in the 1970s. Many of his songs are sympathetic with blue-collar workers. But the singer is not known as anti-cop, and had even recently given a concert to honor a police officer killed on the job.
That didn't stop New York police spokespeople from reacting in fury to this song.
Bob Lucente, who was then president of the New York state chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police, on June 9 called Springsteen a "f---ing dirtbag." After adding an anti-gay epithet, he said, "He goes on the boycott list."
A week later Lucente handed in his badge. His bigoted remarks outraged people of color, the lesbian, gay, bi and trans communities, and other New Yorkers. Lucente was forced to resign.
Patrick Lynch, president of the New York City Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, sent a letter to city cops asking them to refuse to work security at Springsteen's concerts in Madison Square Garden starting June 19. Lynch and other cop defenders claim that the Diallo killing had nothing to do with racism.
Diallo's mother, Kadiatou Diallo, had a different opinion. "I am delighted that people are opening up their eyes and hearts about these cases," she said June 12. "It shows that people really care about what happened to Amadou."
Siakou Diallo, Amadou's father, also said he appreciated "anything that people do to keep his memory alive."
Human Rights report charges 'racial profiling'
Springsteen's lyrics were far closer to the USCHR report on the NYPD than were the cop spokespeople's statements.
The report pointed out that in Staten Island, where the population is only 9 percent Black, 51 percent of the people stopped and searched by police were African American.
According to Chris Phillips, editor-in-chief of a pro-Springsteen magazine called Backstreets, the song struck a chord in the Atlanta audience. By the song's end, they were singing along with the refrain, "41 shots."
"For everyone in the crowd to get it so quickly is really incredible," said Phillips. "It was probably the strongest reaction by a crowd to an unknown song that I've ever seen."
No wonder the cops tried to intimidate Springsteen and the management of the Garden. They know how guilty they are of racist terror, and they know that millions in this country know it too.
The police also know that a song from a rock star that can keep filling Madison Square Garden makes a bigger impact than a report from a commission. And both the song and the report carry a similar message.
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