One of the policemen involved in the 1999 killing of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed street vendor in the Bronx, decided to sue the New York Police Department to return to active service on street patrol. After shooting Diallo, Kenneth Boss, the officer in question, was restricted to serving in the Police Department’s internal bureaucratic departments.

The tragedy of February 4, 1999, remains engraved in the memories of many. Four policemen stopped Diallo, they said because they believed him to be a drug dealer. He took out his wallet to show the officers his documents, and they shot, because, as they explained later, they thought he was taking out a weapon. The 22-year-old Diallo fell to the ground. The autopsy revealed 44 bullets in his body.

The days that followed were extremely difficult. The city, particularly the black population, was already in shock following the Abner Louima case, (Louima, a Haitian immigrant, was brutally tortured in a police station). The gradual disclosure of the details of Diallo’s death, and particularly of the 41 shots which killed him, certainly did not help to calm the mood. In the end, the policemen’s explanation―that they had shot in good faith, believing that Diallo was taking out a weapon―was accepted, and they did not have to pay for that death. However, their superiors refused to allow them to return to patrol, fearing that their presence on the streets could instigate negative reactions.

Now Kenneth Boss claims to be tired of office work, and wants to return to street patrol, which also pays better. The events of three years ago, he says, “weigh upon my heart every day,” but his defense remains the same: “I thought that my colleagues were wounded. I thought that he was about to shoot at me.” He asked Police Chief Raymond Kelly to permit him to be return to patrol, and since he received no response, he decided to ask again through the courts. Boss’s lawyer, Ed Hayes, said that the report will be presented by Feb. 3, but naturally, the very act of making the issue public shows that he and his client hope to obtain a response from Kelly without having to end up in court.