In 1999, when New York City police officers in the Bronx riddled the African immigrant, Amadou Diallo, with 41 bullets from government-issued weapons, Rudolph Giuliani, then mayor of New York, declined to meet with leaders of the city's African-American community.

What's there to talk about – he figured – it was just an accident. Diallo could not be resurrected, and there was no point in provoking a confrontation with the police.

As we know, all four cops were acquitted. Giuliani's behavior left many New Yorkers with a bad after-taste.

This situation repeated itself a year later. In 2000, law enforcement officers shot another innocent victim, again, an African American: Patrick Dorismond. As could be expected, Giuliani expressed his deep regret at the loss of a human life but again declined to meet with representatives of the New York community. What's to discuss, gentlemen? It was an accident.

The tragedy that occurred this past November 25 in Queens (when police officers unloaded 50 bullets into three unarmed clients of the Club Kalua strip club, leaving one person dead and two seriously wounded) was entirely predictable. But if the government turns a blind eye to the actions of law enforcement agencies, writing everything off as an accident, then people will continue to die. True, this time Mayor Michael Bloomberg did meet with African-American leaders and even promised to take appropriate measures.

But it's hard to believe that this will happen. In spite of numerous violations on the part of the police, neither City Hall nor the New York City’s Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB), which is charged with investigating complaints regarding cases of excessive force taken by law enforcement officers, has so far reacted assertively. As a letter recently released to the public from the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) to the CCRB shows, human-rights advocates reprimanded the Board's management because over the course of six months, the CCRB did not get around to investigating hundreds of complaints regarding police misconduct. And then in only one October day, CCRB members reviewed and immediately dismissed 800 claims. What enviable productivity!

In general, it is very difficult to get a clear picture of the number of fatalities resulting from police action. It is essentially a sealed secret. It's possible that the authorities figure they are sparing our nerves by doing this, but this is really nothing more than a complete unwillingness to inform the public about various incidents. It is not clear how law enforcement agencies can be controlled if society has no idea of how many people die every year at the hands of those who are called upon to protect them.

However strange it may seem, not one federal agency currently makes general data regarding fatalities resulting from police operations available. (The same applies locally, by the way.) Separate facts become known exclusively thanks to the pesky press, while the nation knows hardly anything about tragedies occurring outside New York in other large cities. If Amadou Diallo had been shot in a small city and not in the “capital of the world,” in the best case only residents of that community would have known about his death.

The figures are shocking: 41 bullets, 50 bullets. But who among you has heard of the tragedy that occurred five years ago in Camden, New Jersey, when a mentally ill person became the victim of 11 police officers? You'll never guess how many shots were aimed at him – 106! And this person did not have any weapon in his hand except for something the size of a container of talcum powder that was wrapped in a rag that he pulled out of his pocket. A local paper noted his death in passing. It's worth mentioning that no legal proceedings ever took place concerning this case, nobody ever took to the streets in protest, and the police were not even given a slap on the wrist. Our work is both dangerous and difficult.

I have absolutely no desire to belittle the value of the very complicated work performed by law enforcement officers. The fight against crime is most honorable. However, working along with the real professionals – honest and courageous people – are unfortunately police officers who should not be allowed to serve under any circumstances. For some reason, there are more and more of them every year.

Another entirely strange and tragic incident occurred in Chicago last February when cops almost killed one of their colleagues named Howard Morgan, a railroad officer. He was driving and had forgotten to turn on his headlights. According to the police officers, who were all white and all wearing plain clothes at the time, Morgan (an African American) obeyed when he was pulled over and ordered out of the car, but then he suddenly started shooting. And they were purportedly forced to use their weapons in response. Howard was permeated with lead, but he survived.

Morgan's lawyer, former judge Leo Holt, announced on a local Chicago radio station that his client did not actually shoot at anyone.

Meanwhile, some officers actually received light wounds. The local mass media did not ascertain whether these bullets came from their colleague's weapon, or whether they were the result of “friendly fire.”

This case is all the more strange considering Morgan's excellent work history. He was not drunk at the time of the incident, and there were no traces of drugs in his blood. The police officers unanimously confirmed that they were acting in self-defense. As far as the hail of bullets shot practically at point-blank range, well, the brass characterized that as “an accident.” As with the tragedy in Camden, Morgan's case did not receive nationwide coverage.

In its annual publication Uniform Crime Reports, the Federal Bureau of Investigation presents crime statistics relating to law enforcement officers, including the facts of their deaths while on duty. There's not a word about ordinary citizens who have perished at the hand of police officers. What kind of frightening secret could this be?

In 1994, Congress, deciding to respond to demands from society, passed the Crime Control Act. One of the provisions of this Act, the Police Accountability Act, requires the Justice Department (via the Attorney General's office) to publish an annual report on all evidence of unjustified use of force by law enforcement officers and to reveal all data about the civilians who died due to the fault of police officers. The law, however, turned out to be flawed because employees of the Attorney General's office were not vested with the authority to demand concrete information in this regard from state and municipal police chiefs.

As The Washington Post reported, data regarding the unjustified use of force (included in the annual National Crime Survey) was gathered from surveys of the general population and not from the agencies themselves.

“People killed by police officers naturally could not participate in these surveys,” noted the paper with bitter irony, “and none of us will ever know how many lost their lives.”

Reporter James Fife of The Washington Post noted that in the 1970s and 1980s, experts relied on data collected by the Department of Health and Human Services for information on the deaths of people as a result of police action. The average annual figure in the 1970s was 250 deaths. In the first half of the 1980s, that figure reached 325.

However, it later emerged that the Department’s data applied not to the country as a whole, but to only a quarter of its communities.

Specialists believe that the only official source of information regarding the deaths of Americans in the hands of the police that can be trusted is a report published in The Washington Post five years ago. Experts were truly shocked by the data from the 51 largest police departments in the country. It turned out that New York ranked only 43rd on this list. The police departments of Phoenix and San Diego, considered to be exemplary departments, led the list in fatal incidents. Officers from these departments shot many more people (in terms of percentages) than their New York colleagues. Specialists quickly found an explanation for this phenomenon: the concentration of the national media in the Big Apple meant that news of local abuse was carried across the country, while the general public was much less well-informed of events in smaller locales.

Human-rights advocates and experts recommend the collection Stolen Lives – Killed by Law Enforcement, already in its second edition, for those interested in published research on this topic.

To return to the incident on November 25 in New York, the conclusion that suggests itself is that the police officers who fatally shot 23-year-old Sean Bell and wounded his friends acted in violation of departmental regulations. These regulations state that weapons can be used against a moving vehicle only if there is a credible threat to the life of a law enforcement officer.

That the car Bell was driving scratched the car that the plainclothes officers were sitting in cannot in any way serve as an excuse for the shooting rampage.

By the way, the bullets penetrated glass at a nearby subway station. Thank God, the incident occurred early in the morning and none of the few passengers were injured.