Matthew Lysiak, New York Daily News, December 6, 2009
An unlikely tourist attraction has joined the ranks of the Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building and Ground Zero—the spot where Amadou Diallo was shot to death by cops.
Scores of tour buses stop by 1157 Wheeler Ave. every week, disgorging Europeans who excitedly take pictures against a mural dedicated to Diallo’s memory.
“Amadou Diallo is like the Disneyland of the Bronx,” said Wilson Varges, a tour guide for See Tourists. “It’s so popular no tour would be complete without stopping here.”
Diallo, an African immigrant, died in a hail of 41 police bullets on Feb. 4, 1999, while reaching for his wallet. He was unarmed.
His death unleashed cries of police brutality and racial profiling, and the acquittal of the four NYPD cops who shot him sparked massive protests.
Bruce Springsteen paid tribe to Diallo’s memory in the song “41 Shots.”
Since last year, the spot where he fell dead has been marked by an 18-foot mural dominated by his piercing brown eyes gazing out over the street.
The painting features four cops with guns drawn and wearing white hoods to the left of Diallo, under a skeleton-faced Statue of Liberty. The words “American Dream” tower overhead.
{snip}
“It’s beautiful,” gushed Estaben Lacusa, 52, of Barcelona. “Those KKK cop hoods are quite a sight.”
“I had to see the place where the cops shot the unarmed Diallo 41 times,” said Rafeal Peces, 38, of Madrid.
{snip}
[Editors Note: See also the related American Renaissance article Amadou Diallos Revenge here. ]
Original article
(Posted on December 7, 2009)
Comments
The mural is making a specific accusation about the NYPD, that it is linked to the K-people or has cops and officers that are members.. Therefore, the NYPD and the city can use the “artists” in question for libel, and could probably win. Though, finding 9 of 12 (or whatever New York’s civil codes demand of a civil jury) New Yorkers to find for the NYPD over non-whites is probably asking for too much.
Wow…some Europeans must be REALLY starved for tourist excitement these days! Maybe with all those various World War battlefields and centuries of other history in your backyard, the site of some slain African immigrant on a dirty city street becomes fascinating. Bizarre…
“The Disneyland of The Bronx”
“Hey! Lemme get a box of 9mm wad cutters and a Jumbo Dr. Pepper… Not that much ice!!”
The Diallo incident was a tragic nexus of circumstances. Police looking for a rapist; a refugee with poor English language skills and little familiarity with police and police procedures.
While I’m surpised to learn of this world shrine, I know I shouldn’t be. When it comes to blacks, the refrain is ‘keep the hate alive’.
This shrine certainly does show blacks embracing their own poverty, disfunction, and decay.
What a disgrace. No, not what the cops did but the making of this place into a shrine. What about the hundreds of thousands or even millions of White people who have been mugged, robbed, raped and murdered by Blacks since the Civil Rights era began in the 1960’s. That building in which Diallo was shot was once a beautiful building in a beautiful White neighborhood that was literally trashed by Blacks, the same way they trash every neighborhood where the chase Whites out of.
So this shabby mural is a popular attraction for European tourists, eh? The explanation is simple: They’re glad to see they’re not the only ones who have created intractable race problems for themselves with ill-advised immigration policies. It’s a form of gloating.
Yeah and I’m sure the Chinese will think that would be a good place to line up and execute these useful idiots once they take over the ball game.
I am not the most sympathetic to issues like this. Almost every time, it turns out that the “victim” was the one who caused the incident.
But the Diallo case. Something smells about it. Had he been shot once, I’d buy the tragic incidence thing. But 41 times? Many of the shots while he was on the ground? Ooooookay.
Painting hoods onto a white police officer’s image..not racist.
Give them hoodies a bat, and all of a sudden those “piercing brown eyes gazing out over the street” shall become “watery black eyes frozen with terror”.
Nothing to see here, move along…
Wow…some Europeans must be REALLY starved for tourist excitement these days!
WOW!!! again, just imagine the tourist Mecca any other big American city could become if all of the murder locations were marked such as “A guide to murder sites” like the celebrity maps of their homes. Also, perhaps “a Guide to No-Go places in America”
Those European lefties who are so obsessed with dwelling on American “atrocities” ought to get in better touch with their own vast history of persecutions, inquisitions, wars, and witch hunts. At least we don’t have torture chambers and dungeons, not to mention concentration camps and gulags, and we don’t burn dissidents at the stake here either. There are plenty of much gorier scenes in Europe that they could visit. No need to cross the Atlantic to get a little thrill!
Those European Spaniards are very naive about blacks. That’s because there are very few of them in Spain.
That Europeans are fooled into thinking the incident represents some kind of racial injustice, rather than a reflection of the tremendous black violence wherein it is common practice for blacks to draw on the police and murder them, is understandable to those who are aware the European press has an even more leftist bias than the US media.
Frankly, I don’t mind that it is there. That area is going to be another spot where ground zero will occur because of the massive unrest of tribal factions, just as Los Angeles will be another as well.
Before the smoke clears, the entire neighborhood will be reduced to ashes and many things black will be forgotten or ignored in the coming years, so this unjust depiction is living on borrowed time.
Blacks are losers and would do well to clear out now to their own corner of the earth.
Once in a while, a Black really is unjustly shot. 41 shots? Something’s wrong.
Last time something as bad as that happened was when Leonard Deadwyler was shot by a bullying cop in L.A. Back in 1969.
As a Bronx native myself, I can’t help but wonder why the site of the Happy Land Social Club on Tremont Ave. near Southern Blvd. doesn’t attract as much attention.
If I have this straight, four officers fired 41 rounds of ammunition. The real disgrace here is not that they shot an unarmed man who was reaching for his wallet, but that four alleged professionals panicked at a man they outnumbered and hosed the area down. “Spray and pray”, indeed.
To sbuffalonative (re Post #4):
The last sentence in your post is telling. To which I might add: What other race of people on planet Earth take joy in living in abject poverty? What other race of people would take pride in getting shot just so they can get “street credibility”? What other people would have a big-city mayor boasting of crime in his city as being “authentic” because it tends to be committed by people of his own race (Ray Nagin of New Orleans)?
If Marcellus Washington shoots down Willie Africa in Compton, CA, why should we (Caucasians) even pretend to care? Blacks don’t, so why should we?
I may sound harsh, but that’s just how I feel.
Bruce Springsteen paid tribe to Diallo’s memory in the song “41 Shots.”
Anything to stay relevant in this age of hip-hop, huh “Boss”?