On 'overzealous' police

To the Editor:

I write in response to the article "The death match of Rudy and Hillary" [2/26/99, YH] by Dan Dudis. It appears that Mr. Dudis is grossly misinformed about the supposed safety of New York City. Perhaps, to a white man, the city does seem safe. When Mr. Dudis calls the police department "occasionally overzealous," surely he refers, in his own callous way, to the four police officers who recently fired 41 rounds at Amadou Diallo, an unarmed man from Guinea. Or perhaps he is thinking of the incident two summers ago, when police officers tortured Abner Louima, a Haitian immigrant, with the back-end of a plunger, resulting in rectal tears and a laceration to his bladder.

If Mr. Dudis is unaware of the history of police brutality in New York, he is not completely to blame for his ignorance. In 1996 the city settled over 500 police misconduct claims out of court, keeping them out of the press and keeping wealthy conservatives like Mr. Dudis happy about a lower crime rate. Considering Mr. Dudis's fiscal conservatism, I should think he would be interested to know how these claims are typically settled. In 1996, the city paid out $27.3 million in claims against the police. Is that "saving taxpayers a bundle of money?" Take for the example, Sammy Velez, a 100-pound transvestite purse-snatcher with AIDS. After a run-in with an "overzealous" police officer, his left eye dangled from its socket and as a result he was blinded. In 1997, the City of New York paid Mr. Velez $75,000, but nobody was held liable, and the officers involved went undisciplined, although the arresting officer was denied the medal he sought for avoiding traffic to make the arrest. At least Mr. Dudis his candid about is total lack of compassion for the victims of police brutality, but I urge him to do more background research for future columns.

—Camilla L. Lyons, DC '99

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