Fifth Avenue March Decries Diallo Verdict

Thousands of angry protesters marched down Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue on Saturday, denouncing the acquittal of four white police officers in the shooting death of unarmed West African immigrant Amadou Diallo.

Carrying signs that read “Jim Crow justice” and “KKK cops,” and shouting “Whose streets? Our streets!” about 2,000 people of all races and ages paraded past Saks Fifth Avenue, Tiffany’s and the Trump Tower, from 59th Street to 42nd Street, in a raucous display of dissatisfaction over the verdict in Albany on Friday.

Demonstrators blocked traffic and shouted epithets at police--some in riot gear--who lined the route. When the protest reached 42nd Street and the Avenue of the Americas, the marchers massed and were largely surrounded by hundreds of police.

A smaller but still large group continued on, heading downtown toward City Hall and police headquarters at One Police Plaza. More than five hours after the demonstration began, there were still scattered groups of protesters wandering around lower Manhattan, snarling traffic in Chinatown, around City Hall, near Police Plaza and in the city’s East Village.

Authorities estimated that 90 demonstrators had been arrested, most for disorderly conduct or resisting arrest. There was little violence, though some minor scuffles broke out between protesters and police.

The Fifth Avenue protest was the third of the day against Friday’s verdict in the death of Guinean immigrant Diallo, which had already inflamed racial tensions in the city.

A New York State Supreme Court jury of four blacks and eight whites in Albany cleared the four officers--Sean Carroll, 38, Kenneth Boss, 28, Edward McMellon and Richard Murphy, both 27--of second-degree murder and five lesser charges in the Diallo shooting.