Shootings lead to protests many thought were a thing of the past

A recent magazine cover put it succintly: "America the OK". It is true. Things feel strikingly well in the US. Crime is down, the economy is robust, there are fewer teenage pregnancies, the impeachment trial is over. By any indicator things are pretty good. Yet there is a growing undercurrent of a something wrong between America's African-American communities and the police.

In cities as disparate as New York and Riverside, California, two recent shootings of black people by police have sparked angry protests and the kinds of charges of police brutality that many thought were relegated to the distant past.

This week, a 22-year-old man from Guinea was laid to rest in his small mountain village after being shot in New York City. Amadou Diallo was working, like thousands of other immigrants, as a street peddler, hawking wares from a table.

While standing in the vestibule of his apartment building, Diallo was confronted by police who were searching for a rapist. What happened next is under investigation; what is known is that Diallo was not armed, but was nonetheless shot 19 times by police. The officers have been placed on leave.

A popular man and the son of a prominent trader in his home country, Diallo's funeral drew 1,500 mourners in Guinea, including the Rev Al Sharpton from New York. "We promise we will go home and fight for justice," Sharpton said.

The shooting is bringing people to the streets, sparking protests and marches, even in Washington DC. The controversy over the New York City police department and its record of shooting blacks has caused New York City Mayor Rudloph Guiliani's approval rating to drop below 44 per cent. In Riverside, California, the Rev Jesse Jackson called for a federal inquiry into the shooting of Tyisha Miller. The 19-year-old girl was sitting in her car at a petrol station with a gun on her lap. But before her motives could be discovered, four police officers shot her 12 times.

"Will our skin colour be a bait or a magnet for police crime," Mr Jackson asked. "We must end the violence." The issue of police routinely stopping blacks, especially in more affluent areas, has been an issue for years. But evidence was largely anecdotal. That may be changing.

In New Jersey, three state police troopers have filed lawsuits alleging they were forced to target black motorists as part of an official plan called racial profiling. Their case intensified when late last year New Jersey police fired four shots into a van carrying three black men and a Hispanic. Three were wounded. Now the Star-Ledger, a New Jersey newspaper, has published a study showing that 75 per cent of people arrested by troopers on the New Jersey Turnpike in the first two months of 1997 were black.

This is happening as an ugly trial is getting under way in Jasper, Texas. John William King, a 24-year-old white man whose body is covered with racist insignias, is the first to go on trial for the killing last year of James Byrd, a 49-year-old black man who was chained to a pick-up truck and dragged for three miles until his body was torn to pieces.

The irony is that these incidents come at a time when racial healing and reconciliation are more prominent on the national political agenda than they have been in a generation. On any Sunday, television viewers can watch President Clinton attending services in an African-American church somewhere, surrounded by his most loyal supporters.

More than any president in recent memory, Mr Clinton has brought race relations and the economic improvement of blacks onto the political stage. Some observers suggest that what America is seeing is directly related to this, a backlash from some whites who resent African-Americans' growing political power.

That power means little to Amadou Balde, a relative of Mr Diallo, the man killed in New York. As his cousin was being buried Mr Balde remembered the words of his own father.

"He said God Bless America. America receives people from all over the world and once you get there America never drives you out. But when I got big," Mr Balde told the New York Times, "I realized that in America somebody can take a gun and prey on you."