By Indy Scholtens and Elise Ceyral
After Amadou Diallo was killed by four white police officers, Yvette Walton decided to speak out. She used to be the only Black woman patrolling the streets in the Street Crime Unit – the team responsible for shooting 41 bullets at the unarmed Black man.
After 25 years, she looks back at her story and helps us understand: Why did she decide to blow the whistle?
TRANSCRIPT
ELISE: It’s Valentine’s day. February 14th, 1999.
Yvette Walton is getting ready for her first press conference.
She’s wearing a leather coat. Backwards. She needs to cover her dress.
She’s tied a scarf around her face to hide her features. And a pair of dark shades covers her eyes.
INDY: No one can know who she is.
YVETTE WALTON: My mind was like, oh my goodness, I can’t believe I’m doing this.
NOEL LEADER: We dressed her up, and we drove, you know, in circles, just to make sure that we weren’t being followed and then we went to the location.
INDY: 10 days earlier, an unarmed Black man was shot and killed by four white police officers. The man was standing in front of his apartment building in the Bronx. The cops said they thought he had a gun.
NEWSCAST
NEWSCASTER: The young African immigrant died when four plainclothes cops shot him 19 times. Firing 41 bullets. Mistaking the wallet in his hand for a gun.
MUSIC IN
ELISE: The city says that the shooting was an accident. That the four cops mistook the man for a serial rapist.
INDY: But Yvette Walton is about to tell a different story.
INDY: She’s a cop. And not just any cop. She was a member of the street crime unit. The same unit responsible for shooting the unarmed Black man.
YVETTE WALTON: I hope they, being the police department, I hope they don’t find out, you know, that I’m talking.
ELISE: Journalists gather together in a Harlem brownstone to hear what Yvette Walton has to say.
YVETTE WALTON: That street crime was NYPD’s dirty little secret.
MUSIC OUT
ELISE: This is the story of Yvette Walton.
INDY: One disillusioned cop who saw the cracks in the system. And decided to speak out.
MUSIC IN
ELISE: This is Shoe Leather, an investigative podcast that digs up stories from New York City’s past to find out how yesterday’s news affects us today.
INDY: This season, we’re going back to 1999 to tell the story of Amadou Diallo. An unarmed Black man who was killed by four white police officers. They fired 41 shots while he stood in the doorway of his apartment building. 19 hit him. The first likely killed him.
INDY: I’m Indy Scholtens.
ELISE: And I’m Elise Ceyral. This is Shoe Leather, season five, After Amadou. You’re listening to NYPD’S Dirty Little Secret.
MUSIC OUT
SCENE 1: FIGHTING FOR PEOPLE LESS FORTUNATE
ELISE: The first time we have Yvette Walton on the phone is after multiple attempts to reach her. I call her every week to leave a message and explain why Indy and I are looking for her. One random Wednesday, she picks up the phone.
YVETTE WALTON: Hello.
ELISE: Hi.
INDY: Is this Yvette Walton?
YVETTE WALTON: Yes.
ELISE: Oh, hi. We’re reporters for a podcast called Shoe Leather. It’s produced by Columbia Journalism School. Yeah, I don’t know if you’ve heard our message, but…
YVETTE WALTON: I did hear your message. And I was contemplating if I should call back.
ELISE: Yeah…
ELISE: On the call, Yvette explains that she’s received our messages, but she needed some time to think. After all, this story is an emotional one to unpack. But after more than 20 years of silence, Yvette says it’s time to talk.
YVETTE WALTON: Hello?
INDY AND ELISE: Hi!
YVETTE WALTON: Hi! How are you? Can you see me?
INDY AND ELISE: We can’t see you…
ELISE: But we can hear you.
ELISE: Yvette doesn’t live in New York anymore – so we talked to her over zoom…
YVETTE WALTON: I’m trying to figure this out.
INDY AND ELISE: Oh perfect, there you are!
MUSIC IN
INDY: Yvette was born in Harlem in 1961. At the time, her family lives in the projects.
YVETTE WALTON: You were allowed to be a kid. It was a carefree life. Our parents would tell us, you wake up in the morning on the weekends, go outside and don’t come back until the streetlights come on.
INDY: She remembers playing with her friends in front of her apartment building.
YVETTE WALTON: Hide and seek…. uhm… There was a game called Ringolevio… Whatever kind of game. We made use of whatever was available, and that was usually just ourselves.
MUSIC OUT
INDY: But one thing that she loves more than anything is to watch cop shows.
ARCHIVAL TAPE
CHRISTIE LOVE: When you need a cop who’s no lady, get Christie Love. [Gunshots] Police!
ELISE: Get Christie Love, Barnaby Jones, Kojak, Matlock… They might not ring a bell now, but in the 70s and 80s, these shows are everywhere.
YVETTE WALTON: I devoured those shows. Literally devoured them. They just gave me a sense of fighting for people less fortunate.
MUSIC IN
ELISE: As a child, this is how Yvette pictures police work. Police officers lock up bad guys. They protect innocent people. But later, Yvette will learn that in real life things never are that simple.
MUSIC OUT
SCENE 2: IT’S A SPECIAL UNIT
INDY: By the time Yvette gets to middle school, things are changing in New York City. It’s the ‘70s. Crime is on the rise.
ARCHIVAL TAPE
NEWSCASTER: Another teamster official was gunned down last week. As John Miller tells us, it’s just one in a series of gangland style murders.
ALEX VITALE: There’s just this radical increase in homelessness, street graffiti, street level drug dealing, street level sex work, panhandling.
INDY: That’s Alex Vitale. He’s a professor of sociology and criminology at Brooklyn College. He studies policing in New York City.
ALEX VITALE: The city wasn’t dealing with it. No one was dealing with it. And so communities that have been told increasingly the one tool available to address your community problems is policing, they also began to demand action of the police.
ELISE: So, in 1971, the NYPD creates a new team. The Street Crime Unit.
It’s a special unit. Considered elite. Its members patrol high crime areas and dress like civilians – no uniforms. They’re in what the police call plainclothes.
In the street, they look for suspicious activity. Some officers are even disguised as potential crime victims. They walk around waiting for somebody to rob or attack them.
Their goal is to make arrests and deter violent criminals. And to do so, Street Crime Unit officers rely on a technique called stop and frisk.
INDY: Stop and frisk was brought to the Supreme Court in 1968. Three years before the Street Crime Unit’s creation.
The case, Terry v. Ohio, happened in Cleveland. Three men were walking back and forth in front of a jewelry store. A cop thought they looked suspicious. So he stopped them. And when he searched them, he found two guns.
ELISE: The question was this: did police violate the men’s fourth amendment right? To be protected against unreasonable searches?
The Supreme Court said no, they did not. It ruled that police officers could stop and interrogate people they thought looked suspicious if they had a “reasonable basis” to do so.
INDY: As years go by, stop and frisk will become increasingly controversial.
ALEX VITALE: These specialized units are inherently risky because you give them a tremendous amount of power and authority. You usually, divorce them from normal mechanisms of accountability. They’re operating in plain clothes in the middle of the night, and they’re being told they’re responsible for getting the city back on track by getting the bad guys. And this invariably leads to abuse and corruption.
INDY: Civil rights organizations will accuse police officers of targeting people coming from Hispanic and Black communities. In other words: racial profiling.
SCENE 3: “PLAY ALONG“
MUSIC IN
INDY: When Yvette turns 23, her childhood dream comes true. She starts her career with the NYPD. First, as a police administrative aide. She listens to the people coming to the precinct and writes police reports.
ELISE: But quickly, her supervisors see more in her.
YVETTE WALTON: A lot of times, the cops that worked at the same precinct, they would always tell me, and encourage me. You need to take the police officer’s exam because a lot of times taking the reports, I would point out and classify based on the person’s story, what the crime was. And then some of the cops would be like, oh, wow. I didn’t even think about that. So they always tried to encourage me and push me, you know, to take the police exam until finally, I said, why not? [laughs]
MUSIC OUT
INDY: Yvette’s family is proud of her. But in the Black community, her uniform gets mixed reactions. At the time, there are already tensions between the racial minorities and the police.
YVETTE WALTON: That’s something that was problematic in the Black community. You know. How dare you, if you will. How dare you? You know, come out from among us and work for them. Them in air quotes.
ELISE: As soon as Yvette gets to the academy, she’s disillusioned.
YVETTE WALTON: They would, describe different ethnicities within the city. Like, they, they told us like Asian people, they don’t trust the police in their own country. So if there’s crime going on in their community, they’re not going to be forthcoming. Jamaican people, all they do is smoke weed. And my mature mind says, oh so whenever I see a Jamaican person, he’s automatically a criminal. Because they taught us that all they do is smoke weed. When I see a Chinese person, I’m not even gonna waste my time because they’re not going to tell me anything because of the atrocities that they endured in their own country.
MUSIC IN
ELISE: What about Black people? Like Amadou Diallo.
YVETTE WALTON: Black people, their grandmothers raised them because their parents are strung out on drugs. So therefore, why even bother? Hispanic people, especially the men, because that’s exactly how it was phrased, they have a problem with machismo because I had never heard that word before. So in my mind, oh man, every time I come across a Hispanic person, I got to be ready to fight. So when you start putting this into young minds at the age of 21. This is their first job. They still live at home. And you start breaking down society into pockets and painting those people with a broad brush. What are you doing?
MUSIC OUT
ELISE: But Yvette still wants to become an officer. She believes you can only make changes from the inside.
YVETTE WALTON: I had the veteran officers from when I was a civilian. So I would constantly like: ‘That’s what they told us. Is that true?’ You know, just to have somebody to bounce it off of and like, are you kidding me? So they would, you know, calm calm yourself down because you got a mission. You know, you got to get this job. So play along. That was the thing. Play along.
INDY: After a few months of playing along, Yvette is officially a police officer. It’s 1988 and she’s 26 years old.
MUSIC IN
INDY: Her first precinct’s located in Harlem. The neighborhood where she was born and raised. Her ultimate goal is to become a detective. After all, they were her favorite characters in the shows she used to watch.
ELISE: At the time, there’s a straightforward path to get there. Two years in the Street Crime Unit, an elite plainclothes team assigned to high crime areas.
YVETTE WALTON: At that time, they were. Promising, if you will. You spend two years in the street crime unit and you get, you qualify to receive what they call a gold shield to become a detective.
ELISE: After several years as a police officer, her sergeant recommends her. He thinks Yvette would be a good fit for the unit.
In April 1993, she becomes one of the three Black women on the team. Yvette is the only one patrolling the streets.
MUSIC OUT
SCENE 4: BROKEN WINDOWS
INDY: In the early 90s crime in New York reaches its peak. In 1990 each day more than 6 murders, 8 rapes, and almost 300 robberies take place.
ALEX VITALE: I remember, in 93, you know, walking to the subway in a fairly nice neighborhood and still crunching on crack files.
INDY: That’s Alex Vitale, the police specialist.
ALEX VITALE: There were homeless encampments that were visible in many parts of the city. There was graffiti everywhere. And this was very disturbing to folks who who felt that those conditions, you know, were a direct threat to their safety, property values, quality of life and all the rest.
INDY: At the time he says New Yorkers are starting to feel more and more unsafe.
ARCHIVAL TAPE
NEWSCASTER: CNN recently had a New York poll which said that 45% of the residents in New York City said if they could they would leave the city because of deteriorating conditions.
INDY: The man that promises to solve these issues is Rudy Giuliani. He runs for mayor in 1993. His solution is more policing.
ARCHIVAL TAPE
GIULIANI: The most important concrete solution of the problem of crime is to have more police officers in the streets of the city. Physically present, patrolling, available to help people if they have problems. Available to prevent crime before it happens.
ALEX VITALE: He runs on a kind of quote unquote law and order campaign. That took two prongs. The first was a focus on low level disorder, so-called quality of life issues, turning the problems of of homelessness and graffiti and street level sex work and drug dealing into police problems, to be dealt with very aggressively. And the second was to, you know, beef up, intensive policing of of, of all types of crime.
ELISE: In 1994, Giuliani is elected. He introduces the “broken windows theory.”
ARCHIVAL TAPE
GIULIANI: If you have a building and somebody breaks the window. And you say to yourself I’m too busy with my business, I’m too busy with everything else to worry about that one broken window, it’s very likely that in a short period of time somebody will break another window and another window. Eventually they will break all the windows in your building, and your building will fall down, because you thought the first problem was so small you didn’t have to deal with it.
INDY: But he says, if you immediately fix the window, find the person that did it, and tell them that this is unacceptable, you will probably save the whole building.
ELISE: In other words: if you’re tough on small crimes, you will prevent bigger ones.
MUSIC IN
ELISE: Giuliani starts making reforms within the NYPD. Their new motto: zero-tolerance policing. Instead of waiting for crime to happen, officers go out and prevent it. Their task for the Street Crime Unit is to get guns off the street.
INDY: In the same year a system called CompStat is created. It tallies murders, rapes, robbaries, burglaries… and other major crimes across the city. Now the NYPD is able to track crimes in every precinct. But it also increases pressure on police… to make arrests. Their supervisors can track their productivity now.
ALEX VITALE: You know, in an environment where the broken windows theory said we need intensive and invasive policing of poor and vulnerable populations. They want evidence that you’re out doing that.
WILBUR CHAPMAN: And after a while it just became a numbers game. And those who did not reduce crime, those who did not up their summons and arrest numbers were viewed as less effective than those who did.
INDY: That’s Wilbur Chapman. In 1995, Mayor Giuliani promotes him to chief of patrol. He is in charge of all of the cops across the city. Including the street crime unit.
WILBUR CHAPMAN: They were very effective. They also knew how to disarm people tactically without engaging in gun battles. And they were experienced.
INDY: But that would all change soon… Eventually the numbers game would catch up to the unit.
MUSIC OUT
SCENE 5: “THE PURPOSE WAS LOST”
ELISE: When Yvette gets to the Street Crime Unit in 1993. Her main role is to protect truck and taxi drivers. At the time they’re targeted by robbers and hijackers. But with Rudy Giuliani as New York’s mayor she starts to feel the shift.
YVETTE WALTON: I just remember, like I said, Giuliani had come into office. The taxi livery task force was totally pushed to the side. The motto was get guns and two guns per person, per car, every 30 days. And it just snowballed.
Every officer in the unmarked car was required – in air quotes, because there are no quotas, as they say, was required to make two gun arrests per month. So that’s six gun collars. Per month.
ELISE: Is that a lot?
YVETTE WALTON: If you’re not violating people’s civil rights?
ELISE: It is?
YVETTE WALTON: Yes.
ELISE: 2 guns per month for every officer. 6 guns per team. Yvette says it’s these expectations that push Street Crime Unit officers to abuse their power.
MUSIC IN
YVETTE WALTON: In Street Crime – everybody knows now so I’m just going to say it. We just really – well not we, we me – but the majority of them, of the cops. And it was, no offense, white males. We’d be assigned to a precinct, an area, and there would be especially like in the summer, you know, people hanging out. When I grew up in Harlem, that’s what we did growing up. It’s hot. We’re outside with our friends. You know, we’re just talking and everything. But that was utilized as a reason to jump out the police car. Unmarked police car now. And just, some with guns drawn. And everybody get up on the wall. That’s violation.
MUSIC OUT
YVETTE WALTON: Initially, when I first started seeing that, I was a little bit naive to it because I believed in the mission. And then I talked to people. Other cops. Other minority cops because they know people in their communities. And they would tell the other cops, minority officers, what experiences they’ve had with the Street Crime Unit. So that’s what made me pay more attention.
ELISE: And how did that make you feel seeing the way these officers were targeting, so, especially people of color? How did that make you feel being a Black woman, being in the car with them?
YVETTE WALTON: It made me angry. Because I looked at the … Now don’t get me wrong. If somebody is out there doing what they’re not supposed to do, I might be the first one, you know, to slap cuffs on them.
MUSIC IN
YVETTE WALTON: But for me, it made me angry, because in those young Black and Hispanic males, I saw my cousins, my nephews, and if my son was old enough, my son. So it was personal.
MUSIC OUT
ELISE: In Yvette’s team, there’s one Hispanic and two white officers. And all four of them feel the same about their job. So they make far fewer gun arrests. They’re known as the “do-nothing car.”
INDY: When Yvette has to work with other teams, she tries to make sure that no one gets hurt. That the cops don’t abuse their power. But after a few months, she decides to request a transfer.
YVETTE WALTON: Remember though, it was only supposed to be two years and you get a gold shield. I was trying to hang in there for the two years just to get the gold shield, and then I was out. But by seeing, what I was seeing and it was allowed to be done. I put my transfer papers in and was literally begging. Get me out of here.
INDY: In March 1995, Yvette is out the unit.
YVETTE WALTON: The purpose was lost. We went in with the purpose, the elite, the taxi livery task force. That was a goal. That was a purpose. After that, new administration. Get guns, get guns. We own the night. It was cowboys. NYPD’s dirty little secret.
MUSIC IN – Bang Bang from Le Tigre
INDY: “We own the night” the Street Crime Unit’s unofficial motto. It gets so famous that musicians even write songs about it.
MUSIC OUT
ELISE: We wanted to hear from other cops who were part of the Street Crime Unit. Did they feel the same way as Yvette?
INDY: We reached out to 20 cops. Nine never responded. Four refused to speak with us. One former member did speak with us – but off the record.
ELISE: Most of the cops who respond are reluctant to talk. They say the media often portrays police as racists, murderers or abusive.
INDY: One sends us a text: “No Real Street Crime Unit Operator will ever speak to a reporter. Especially those of the Liberal, Progressive, and Democratic mindset pushing fake news narratives.” We try to convince him with another text. But he never gets back to us.
ELISE: No one else on the unit would do an interview. But the man in charge of their training did. Wilbur Chapman – the guy Giuliani promoted to chief of patrol.
WILBUR CHAPMAN: I was in charge of all of the uniforms throughout the city, which included the street crime unit.
ELISE: Chapman confirms a lot of what Yvette has been telling us.
WILBUR CHAPMAN: The street crime unit is a, it’s like a private fraternity. There were 138 officers who were considered the best of the precinct anti-crime units. They were not a diversified unit. I think it was a 138…
INDY: In 1995, 80% of the unit is white.
WILBUR CHAPMAN: They were specifically focused on taking guns off the street and dealing with violent crime. And it was sort of a word of mouth detail. If you came into street crime and I sponsored you and you weren’t productive or you created a problem, both of us would get kicked out of street crime.
INDY: While Chapman is Chief of Patrol, crime goes down in New York City. Giuliani’s approach seems to work. But now, he wants to take it a step further. Expand the unit. Not everyone thinks that’s a good idea.
MUSIC IN
WILBUR CHAPMAN: There were two schools of thought. My school of thought, and Captain Savage’s school of thought was, this is a wonderful unit. It’s working effectively. Don’t change it.
INDY: Captain Richard Savage is the man who was the commanding officer of the Street Crime Unit at the time. He handpicked the officers for the unit.
WILBUR CHAPMAN: There was another school of thought that if you quadruple the size of the unit, you could quadruple the number of guns you could take off the streets.
ELISE: Giuliani wants to expand the unit, and so does the Police Commissioner, but Chapman warns them.
WILBUR CHAPMAN: Now if you’re going to quadruple it, you’re going to do two things. You were taking people out of precinct anti-crime units, so you were, you were really diminishing the effectiveness on the precinct level, and you were taking people from places they knew, and it would take a while for them to develop the expertise of the original 138 people. Obviously, my philosophy, didn’t prevail. There was stronger voices in the department and higher ranking voices that silenced me.
MUSIC OUT
INDY: The city expands the unit in 1997. It adds 300 officers.
WILBUR CHAPMAN: As a result of that, people who might have worked in Queens or might have worked in Brooklyn may have wound up in the Bronx working in street crime, and were not acclimated to the area.
INDY: After the expansion, Chapman is transferred to the Department of Transportation. The captain of the unit – Savage – isn’t allowed to hand pick each member anymore.
ELISE: Richard Murphy, Edward McMellon, Kenneth Boss, and Sean Carroll are part of this new wave of officers. Carroll and McMellon volunteer for the unit. Murphy and Boss are promoted.
MUSIC IN
INDY: Boss comes with a past. On a Halloween night in 1997 he had shot a young man while on duty. The man later died in the hospital. Boss is still under investigation by the District Attorney when he joins the unit.
In fact Boss will be investigated for killing two men… less then a year after he joins the plainclothes unit.
MUSIC OUT
SCENE 6: “WHERE’S THE FUCKING GUN?”
ELISE: It’s after midnight. February 4th, 1999. Two years after the plain clothes unit has quadrupled in size. The new officers – Richard Murphy, Edward McMellon, Kenneth Boss, and Sean Carroll – they’re patrolling the Bronx together.
INDY: As they arrive on Wheeler avenue officer Carroll sees something.
MUSIC IN
SEAN CARROL: We turn the corner and I look up and down. Look to my right. There’s no one there. And I look down the block a little bit, and I noticed an individual. He, was standing there. It was, my observation it was dimly lit. He appeared that he was looking up and down the block, peeking his head out. Why are you standing on the stoop, peeking his head out, looking down to the left?
RICHARD MURPHY: I heard Sean say to Kenny Boss, you know, hold up, hold up. I got something on the right.
SEAN CARROL: He stepped backwards back into the vestibule as we were approaching, like he didn’t want to be seen. And then, we passed by, and I’m looking at him, and I’m trying to figure out what’s going on, you know? What’s this guy up to?
KENNETH BOSS: I stopped the car. I put it in reverse and backed up.
SEAN CARROLL: Eddie and I get out and we start walking towards the individual.
EDWARD MCMELLON: I held my shield up my left hand, which I always do. And I have. I have a phrase that I always use. Police department, city of New York. Can I have a word with you, please?
SEAN CARROL: We started approaching, and then, officer McMullen again said, you know, please hold on one second for a quick word with you. At that point, the individual started slowly walking backwards… and then…
INDY: The man the officers see is Amadou Diallo. He’s 23 years old. An immigrant from West Africa. And he’s standing in the doorway of his own apartment building. The officers testify he’s making them nervous.
MUSIC OUT
EDWARD MCMELLON: At that point, Mr. Diallo began to frantically try to pull something out of his right side.
SEAN CARROL: I was getting a little bit leery from the training and my past experience of, of arrest involving gun arrests. The individual started turning his side as as if he wanted to shield his right side. He turned [looked like he was] making the motion into his right side and then ran that short distance, to get to the rear door of, of that vestibule.
EDWARD MCMELLON: “Everything was so calm. And then I it became I became nervous quickly. What he was doing.
MUSIC IN
RICHARD MURPHY: As I’m getting out of the car, I heard Eddie and Sean yelling, police department, police department. I heard someone, I don’t know who was saying what, but I heard let me see your hands to that effect. And now I started running pretty fast to try and catch up.
EDWARD MCMELLON: I took my gun out, somewhere after this point. As I took that step into the vestibule. I could see Mr. Diallo begin to turn. And in his hand I could see a black square object. I thought it was a gun. And he started turning and, I heard Sean yell. He’s got a gun! And, I scream, what are you doing? And I fire.
MUSIC OUT
INDY: The four officers fire 41 shots. 19 of them hit Amadou Diallo. The first bullet is likely the one that killed him.
EDWARD MCMELLON: Sean was kneeling over Mr. Diallo.
SEAN CARROLL: I said. Where’s the fucking gun? Where’s the fucking gun?
EDWARD MCMELLON: Mr. Diallo’s right hand was outstretched and I could see black square object, and, I thought it was a gun. I went to grab the gun, and, as I got closer, it wasn’t a gun.
MUSIC IN
INDY: The black square object was a wallet. After the news gets out, people are furious. An investigation into the Street Crime Unit is ordered. What led to four white officers shooting 41 bullets at an unarmed Black man?
MUSIC OUT
SCENE 7: “IF ONLY I HAD SAID SOMETHING”
ARCHIVAL TAPE
NEWSCASTER 1: A day and a half after the fatal shooting of 22-year-old Ahmed Diallo, NYC police say they still don’t know what really happened.
NEWSCASTER 2: The young African immigrant died when four plainclothes cops shot him 19 times. Firing 41 bullets. Mistaking the wallet in his hand for a gun. Today…
ELISE: Like most New Yorkers at the time, Yvette learns from media reports that a young man named Amadou Diallo has been killed.
YVETTE WALTON: All I remember was I said a few expletives and I just visualized. I’m a visual person. So I just visualized this poor man, young man, being cornered in this building vestibule. And those vestibules, for that part of the Bronx and that area, they’re pretty small, you know, and compact. My heart was hurting. Because like I told you guys before, I have a son. I have, male nephews, a lot of the female officers I work with, they have male children, you know, so all of their faces became his face.
MUSIC IN
YVETTE WALTON: I remember what I felt and and just knowing that it was by officers in the street crime unit. And doing everything that I had witnessed being done. So I carried guilt. I beat myself up internally. Like if only I had said something. And I always said, all the way back then, that street crime was NYPD’s dirty little secret, because the thought process, in my estimation, was that. “Oh, these. Poor, impoverished people. They’re not going to say anything because most likely they’re, they’re criminals anyway, so they’re not going to complain.”
MUSIC OUT
ELISE: Eventually Yvette does speak out.
INDY: She shares her story with two other cops, Eric Adams and Noel Leader. Both think she should talk to the media. Today, we know Eric Adams as New York’s mayor. But at the time, he’s one of the leaders of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement. So is Noel Leader. Together, they fight against racism in the NYPD.
ELISE: This leads us to that Valentine’s day morning. February 14th, 1999. Two weeks after Amadou is killed. Yvette’s first press conference. Eric Adams and Noel Leader have invited the press to a brownstone in Harlem. The conference is supposed to start at 10:30.
NOEL LEADER: So, you know, she came to the house, we dressed her up, and we drove, you know, in circles, just to make sure we weren’t being followed. And then we went to the location.
INDY: That’s Noel Leader.
NOEL LEADER: And then we took different routes because, you know – a lot of the people don’t know either, also is that the police department, because we were so critical, they were tapping our telephones. They were following us. And we’re police officers. I’ve never been arrested. I’ve never been the subject of a criminal activity. You know. But they would monitor us because we were critical.
MUSIC IN
INDY: Later, Eric Adams will even receive threats. They’re signed: “Your friend on the dark side.” He thinks they come from the NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau.
ELISE: Now, remember, at the time Yvette has left the Street Crime Unit. Not the NYPD altogether. She still works as a police officer in the Bronx. Speaking out could have very bad consequences on her career. So that day, she also appears in disguise.
YVETTE WALTON: I did it right before church, and I remember, Noel Leader, he had a long black leather trench coat because I had on pantyhose, you know, and heels. And he let me use his coat. I put it on backwards.
ELISE: Yvette is also wearing a scarf to cover her face and a pair of dark glasses. She was the only Black woman on patrol during her time in the Street Crime Unit. Her dress could give her away.
MUSIC OUT
INDY: After that interview, Yvette is invited to many shows to speak about her experience. She always appears in disguise. And her voice is changed. This is from ABC. February 26th. A few weeks after Amadou was killed.
JOURNALIST: This recent member of the Street Crime Unit would speak to us only in shadow.
YVETTE WALTON: We were told someone on a bicycle was either carrying a gun or carrying drugs. Someone on a bicycle, we would accidentally on purpose bump the bike.
JOURNALIST: With the car.
YVETTE WALTON: Exactly.
JOURNALIST: And then what would happen?
YVETTE WALTON: We would jump off the car and we would frisk the person.
JOURNALIST: In all the years that you were in the unit. Did you ever pull over a white person?
YVETTE WALTON: No.
Elise: A few weeks later, Yvette appears at a City Council hearing. She’s still in disguise. Howard Safir is the police commissioner at the time. He’s also sitting in the room.
YVETTE WALTON: I had on what I call my bootleg Carhartt jacket. And I had on some baggy, denim jeans. I had some, some big Timberland boots, because I was trying to give off that I was masculine and not feminine, [laughs].
ELISE: Yvette reads her opening statement from back then – more than 25 years ago.
YVETTE WALTON: “Life in the New York City Police Department Street Crime Unit is a living example of how a police department could lose control of the basic principle…” Oh wow, see? So you know I wasn’t lying.
ELISE: Yeah, yeah. That was pretty strong. “Could lose control of the basic principle of civil rights.”
INDY: Later that day, Yvette calls her supervisor. She learns that she’s been dismissed from the NYPD. Effective immediately. Yvette later sued the NYPD for wrongful dismissal. And she won. Her lawyer showed that the police department knew she was the one speaking out. Yvette was able to get her job back. And she remained a police officer until she retired in 2003.
The four cops that shot Amadou Diallo were charged with second degree murder, but acquitted of all charges. Richard Murphy and Edward McMellon transferred to the New York Fire Department.
Kenneth Boss and Sean Carroll stayed within the NYPD. Boss – the officer who had shot and killed two black men during his career – was later promoted to sergeant.
Boss and Caroll are retired now. We knew we had to talk to the four cops about Amadou Diallo. Ask them how they remember that night when they look back. Has anything changed 25 years later?
ELISE: For weeks we try to reach the cops. We go through lists of possible phone numbers. At one point, we reach what we think is the home of one of the officers. His son picks up.
INDY: Hi, is this Richard Murphy?
RICHARD MURPHY’S SON: Who’s calling?
ELISE: We tell Richard Murphy’s son about the story we’re working on – that we really want to speak to his dad about what happened back then.
INDY: A little later, I’m surprised to see who’s calling, It’s Richard Murphy. He tells me he doesn’t want to speak about the case.
ELISE: Eventually, we reach another officer – Edward McMellon.
EDWARD MCMELLON: Hi. I got a call from this number.
INDY: Yeah. That’s correct. Hi. My name is Indy Scholtens. I’m a reporter, and I’m looking for Edward McMellon.
EDWARD MCMELLON: Yeah. This is Edward McMellon. I’m just going to let you know that I don’t talk to reporters.
ELISE: Yeah, um..
EDWARD MCMELLON: About any… about anything, but I, I hope you have a wonderful weekend and, and take care, be safe.
ELISE: Yeah can you just. Sorry. This is.
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ELISE: Oh my God.
INDY AND ELISE: Okay.
INDY: We leave messages for both cops. We tell them that we’re working on this podcast and we want to give them an opportunity to respond. But they never get back to us.
SCENE 8: “NOT MY FAULT”
ELISE: In 2002, three years after Amadou Diallo’s death, the Street Crime Unit is disbanded. An investigation finds the unit guilty of racially profiling Black and Hispanic men during stops and frisks.
INDY: In the years to come, plainclothes units are disbanded and then created again. In New York, the anti-crime unit is disbanded in 2020 after George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests.
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NEWSCASTER: The Police Commissioner announced the NYPD will no longer have undercover anti-crime officers. Those plainclothes teams have been patrolling in every precinct in unmarked cars, tasked with focusing on specific crime problems and getting guns off the street. The commissioner says that for this reason these undercover cops are involved in more shootings than their uniformed counterparts. Effective immediately all 600 undercover anticrime officers citywide will be reassigned to other divisions.
ELISE: Only three years later, a new unit is created by mayor Eric Adams. The same man who spoke out against the Street Crime Unit 25 years ago. This time the unit is called the neighborhood safety team.
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NEWSCASTER: The city pinning its hopes on the first wave of Neighborhood Safety Teams that started working today in areas of the city with high gun crime. They have been specially trained to prevent the aggressive and some say abusive tactics of the old anti-crime units.
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ELISE: For years, Yvette Walton kept this story a secret. She wanted to keep it all in the past – that she once was the anonymous whistleblower in a Harlem brownstone. And she was afraid of retaliation. But recently, she started talking to her family and friends about it.
YVETTE WALTON: It literally took me on the 20th anniversary of me speaking out. That’s when I realized, okay. I can identify myself. I can come out from the shadow, if you will, and and start, letting people know who I am and what happened…
ELISE: I think we had one more question. So, why did you decide to talk to us today?
YVETTE WALTON: I’m now, realizing that is not my fault. That I didn’t speak up. That was a conflagration of incidents that were totally out of my control.
INDY: Yvette decided to forgive herself for not speaking up sooner – before Amadou Diallo was killed. And she says, that was the first step towards healing.
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ELISE: Shoe Leather is a production of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. This episode was reported, written and produced by Elise Ceyral and Indy Scholtens.
INDY: Joanne Faryon is our executive producer and professor. Rachel Quester and Peter Leonard are our co-professors. Special thanks to Columbia Digital Libraries.
Shoe Leather’s theme music – ‘Squeegees’ – is by Ben Lewis, Doron Zounes and Camille Miller, remixed by Peter Leonard.
ELISE: Other music by Blue dot sessions. Our Season five graphic was created by Indy Scholtens with help from Serena Balani.
We would like to thank NY public radio, ABC Nightline and NY1 for letting us use tape from their archives.
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