The Shooting of Amadou Diallo
				Full coverage Chronology of events Articles in the archives Biographies of Diallo and the officers Discuss the case on our message board Mar. 31: Officers charged with second-degree murder Mar. 16: Giuliani's popularity plummets after shooting Feb. 16: Protests spread to Guinea Feb. 12: Thousands attend memorial service Feb. 5: New York awaits answers in police slaying

NEW YORK (Court TV) — Adding to the intense scrutiny of the New York police department in the wake of the Diallo shooting, state Attorney General Elliot Spitzer announced Wednesday that he will investigate charges that police officers frisk people without justification.

"There is a tidal wave of concern out there," he told The New York Times. "This is perceived as the overwhelming civil rights issue facing the city."

Once lauded for their success in dramatically reducing the city's crime rate, the 38,000 officers in the New York police force have come under fire since four white officers killed an unarmed African immigrant, Amadou Diallo, in a barrage of bullets on Feb. 4.

The outrage unleashed at the shooting has gained momentum since that February night, fueled by simmering resentment of aggressive police tactics in minority communities.

At the Rev. Al Sharpton's daily protests and sit-ins outside police headquarters in Manhattan, two Congressmen and former Mayor David Dinkins have been among the dozens arrested.

At Thursday's rally — the largest yet — NAACP president Kweisi Mfume took his turn in plastic handcuffs, along with 60 others as hundreds of supporters cheered.

Sharpton has promised more protests and arrests until the four officers who shot Diallo 19 times are arrested.

Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, whose approval ratings have plummeted since the shooting, has accused activists of exploiting Diallo's death to gain media attention and engage in unfair blanket condemnations of the police department.

Praising the police department as the "finest in the country," Giuliani has criticized Sharpton's protests as a "publicity stunt" and chastised the African-American leader for keeping police officers from more important duties by staging the daily sit-ins.

"I think this is getting to be a truly abusive situation," said Giuliani. "I think they're over the top now."

Minority city residents say that the abuse is coming from the police themselves. Their complaints of unwarranted searches and intrusions have now attracted the attention both of federal and state agencies.

In an effort to find illegal guns, the New York police frisk, or "toss", tens of thousands of people every year that they perceive as suspicious.

Only about one in five is actually arrested, but police say it's worth inconveniencing five people to find that one gun and prevent its future use in a crime.

Many minority residents say the police target blacks and Hispanics, particularly young men, but the police say they simply concentrate their efforts on high-crime neighborhoods, which have few white residents.

Spitzer said he may file a civil-rights lawsuit against the city if his investigation reveals a pattern of unjustified harassment and searches based on racial profiling or stereotypes.

The federal civil rights commission is also launching an inquiry into possible civil-rights violations, and is expected to subpoena both the city's police commissioner, Howard Safir, and the mayor himself.

The family of Amadou Diallo, a native of Guinea, is expected to file its own civil-rights suit, just as Haitian immigrant Abner Louima did after police officers allegedly beat him and sodomized him with a wooden stick in a Brooklyn precinct station in 1997.

Federal authorities have taken over the prosecutions of the officers involved in the alleged Louima beating, which put him in the hospital for two months with internal injuries. The trial of the four white officers indicted in that case begins next month.

— Catherine Heins