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) — When the four police officers who shot Amadou Diallo finally make their appearance in court, the Rev. Al Sharpton wants their victim's parents to have a front-row seat.

News that the four officers had been indicted for second-degree murder leaked out last week, but the Bronx grand jury has not yet officially announced the results of their inquiry into the shooting that left the unarmed African immigrant dead on his doorstep on Feb. 4.

Nonetheless, Diallo's parents and sisters are planning to fly from their homeland of Guinea back to New York to attend the officers' arraignment, which is expected to take place after they are formally charged on Wednesday.

Diallo's parents flew to New York to claim their son after the shooting, and attended a memorial service here with 2,000 New Yorkers before bringing his body home for burial.

Sharpton held a final downtown protest of the Diallo shooting Monday. More than 150 people were arrested for blocking the entrance to One Police Plaza, including former police officers, but Sharpton said the protests would move to the Bronx courthouse on Tuesday and Wednesday.

The daily protests against the Diallo shooting have grown to a more general denunciation of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's administration and the police brutality protestors say it tolerates.

Signs calling for the arrests of the four officers have been largely replaced by signs proclaiming "Arrest Giuliani."

More than 1,000 people have been arrested in the demonstrations, including Jesse Jackson, actress Susan Sarandon, former mayor David Dinkins, more than dozen rabbis, and numerous federal, state, and local politicians.

Protests are also expected outside a Brooklyn federal courthouse this week, as jury selection started off the trial of five police officers charged with the beating and torture of Haitian immigrant Abner Louima in 1997. Louima attended Diallo's memorial service.

Combined with numerous anecdotal accounts of insensitive treatment, the two cases have inflamed public sentiment against the police.

Once praised for its success in reducing crime in the last five years, the largest police department in the country now finds itself charged with widespread police brutality and harassment of minorities, particularly young black and Latino men.

"Minorities are humiliated and angered by the indignity of being treated all too often as presumptive criminals," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., in a speech calling on the department to close the racial rift.

In response to public concerns and complaints, law enforcement authorities are also mounting state and federal investigations into New York's police department, which the mayor defends as the finest in the country.

For their part, police officers say they are tired of being demonized in the wake of the Louima beating and the Diallo shooting. Hundreds launched a counter-protest last week to complain that the public's accusations (some signs have compared the police to the Ku Klux Klan) were unfair.

In an advertisement widely published on Monday, the president of the police union, James Savage, complained that public fury at the Diallo shooting was depriving the four officers of due process in court.

He accused the protests' organizers of exploiting a tragic incident for political advantage "to destroy the mayor politically and to railroad into jail four unfortunate New York City police officers whose only motivation was to fight crime, protect the public, and get home safely."

Two newspaper polls have shown that Giuliani's approval rating, always closely linked to the city's dramatic decline in crime, have dropped sharply. Only about 40 percent of New Yorkers say they are satisfied with the mayor's performance, compared to 60 percent before the Diallo shooting.

In response to the Louima beating, Mayor Giuliani cleaned out the 70th precinct where the alleged attack occurred, and organized a task force to make recommendations on how to improve the police force.

Those recommendations, a year later, were largely ignored. Now, in response to the Diallo shooting, the police department has proposed its own set of internal reforms, particularly to the Street Crimes Unit, to which the four officers who shot Diallo belonged.

Street Crimes Unit officers will now have to wear uniforms, instead of patrolling in plainclothes and unmarked cars. Up to 50 minority officers will be transferred into the overwhelmingly white unit, which now has 400 officers.

Court TV's Catherine Heins and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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