GIULIANI - BLAME DRUGS, NOT COPS

NEW YORK - The morning after an undercover officer fatally shot an
unarmed man in the Bronx neighborhood where Amadou Diallo was also
killed, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said yesterday he could not guarantee
similar police shootings would not occur there in the future.

"How can I say that it's not going to happen again?" he asked at a
news conference about the shooting of Malcolm Ferguson, killed by only
a few blocks from where Diallo lived. "When we cure drug dealing,
significant violent crime - when we cure all that, then this will not
happen again."

The Ferguson shooting, which brought about 100 angry protesters to the
neighborhood Wednesday night, came at a particularly tense time in
police-community relations in the city.

Six days ago, an Albany jury acquitted four white undercover officers
who fired 41 shots at Diallo in the vestibule of his Bronx apartment
building, and a Brooklyn jury is considering the fate of three
officers charged with concealing the police torture of Abner Louima.

Yesterday, the Rev. Al Sharpton and Diallo's parents met with Justice
Department officials in Washington to try to persuade the federal
government to pursue charges against the four officers who gunned down
their unarmed son. During the meeting, protesters marched outside to
demand federal action.

And a nationwide Harris Poll released yesterday found that 76 percent
of black Americans and 45 percent of whites believe police brutality
against minorities is relatively common.

Both Diallo and Ferguson were black and lived in the Soundview
neighborhood of the Bronx.

"They got away with Diallo," said neighbor Yolanda Jones,
34.

"Now, all of a sudden, they think they just have the right to pull out
and shoot."

City officials however, took pains to draw distinctions between the
February 1999 police killing of Diallo and the shooting of Ferguson,
who was described yesterday as a career criminal with arrests for
robbery, burglary, heroin trafficking, possession of a handgun,
selling heroin and resisting arrest.