Last month's funeral for Amadou Diallo was a somber occasion, commemorating the life of a young man who had been wrongly shot to death on Feb. 4 by New York Police Department (NYPD) officers. His death is only the latest in a series of police brutality cases over the last year, but it serves to remind us all the more of the fine line between enforcing "law and order" and destroying civil liberties.

In Deallo's case, four NYPD officers shot a total of 41 bullets at the unarmed man, who was about to enter his apartment. 19 bullets reached their target, many after Diallo's lifeless body had slumped onto the steps of his home.

Because of the "48 hour rule" in New York City, the police officers involved had two days to confer with a police union labor lawyer, before making a comment to the public. Predictably, they offered a terse statement, saying they believed Diallo was a rape suspect who had been reaching for a gun.

Yet the description of the rape suspect given to police officers was a "black man in his early 20s," an extremely vague and definitely broad description. And once the bullet-riddled body of Diallo was examined, all that was found on him were a beeper and a wallet. Diallo had no history of a criminal record.

The incident is even more shocking in light of the statistic that 90 percent of NYPD officers never fire their guns. As Attorney General Janet Reno said at a Thursday press conference, "Firing 41 bullets at an unarmed man--there is just no excuse for that."

No excuse indeed. And this case is not an isolated incident. New York residents still remember the heinous torture of Abner Lounima, who, while handcuffed, was sodomized with a plunger by NYPD officers only a year ago.

In the wake of Diallo's death, the people of New York looked to Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to reach out to the victim's parents and denounce the atrocity. Yet Giuliani, a former federal prosecutor and staunch defended of the NYPD, has not followed the lead of the Attorney General and others who have condemned the police officers for their actions. Instead, Guiliani points to N.Y. City's declining crime rate as an implicit justification for the city's aggressive crime fighting.

But if anything, Diallo's death is an indication that lower crime rates have come at a great price. Civil liberties and, more importantly, out fundamental human rights are being sacrificed for the sake of "law and order."

A 1996 Amnesty International report showed that many of the victims of police brutality in the United States are unarmed, lack a criminal record and belong to an ethnic minority. The fact that Giuliani turns a blind eye to these sorts of statistics and deaf ear to the pleadings of minorities to watch dog is disturbing, to say the least.

The implications are ominous. Distrust between the black and Hispanic members of crime-redden areas and the white police officers who patrol them runs deep. In the past weeks, tension has gripped these communities, and racial conflicts have escalated. And as protesters stormed City Hall last week with Diallo as their symbol, there was a feeling of desperation. More and more minorities are starting to live in fear--not just of violent crime, but of the officers who are supposed to prevent it.