Officer who shot Amadou Diallo becomes ‘Sergeant of the Year’

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On Tuesday, a police officer involved in the 1999 shooting of unarmed Guinean immigrant Amadou Diallo will be honored as “Sergeant of the Year” at the Sergeant’s Benevolent Association.

Sergeant Kenneth Boss now works with the NYPD Aviation unit and is one of eight NYPD sergeants receiving the award, largely as a result of his actions in repelling from a helicopter to rescue a couple who had been stranded on a small island overnight.

The couple who were rescued, Jenny Ly, 50, and Kevin Huynh, 52, said that they had never heard of the Diallo case and were just glad to see Boss after being trapped.

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“He was very nice! First he came down and he asked me, ‘Are you OK? Do you need any medical attention?’” Ly told the NY Daily News. “He said, ‘You don’t need to do anything. Let me do all the work. Just hold my arm.’”

Boss was one of the officers who fired shots at Diallo as the unarmed man reached for his wallet in a dark apartment building. He fired 5 of the 41 shots fired at Diallo and was eventually acquitted in the shooting.  While the other officers left the NYPD, Boss stayed and served on desk duty.

This isn’t the first time Boss has been honored since the 1999 shooting.  Last December, there was outcry over his promotion to Sergeant.

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“You have so many police officers out there who deserve to be promoted, and this man is being promoted?” said Diallo’s mother Kadiatou Diallo in 2015.  “This is a stab in the heart.”

With the latest news of an honor for Boss, Diallo’s mother expressed she was at peace but would want to meet the officer one day.

“The first thing I would do is talk to him about who Amadou was,” Diallo told the NY Daily News. “If he ever met him, he would have known there was no way Amadou could ever harm him or anyone else.”

“For the rest of his life, whatever else [Boss] does, he’ll be remembered as one of the officers involved with Amadou. I pray for healing. I wish for him to move on in a constructive way, to do good, and that is what he is doing.”

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