NEW YORK – About 2,000 demonstrators marched to Times Square  protesting police brutality Sunday as part of the National Day of Protest to Stop Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation. Leading the procession were a contingent of family members who lost relatives at the hands of the New York Police, including Saikou Diallo, whose son Amadou was killed Feb. 4, 1999 when four members of the city’s Street Crime Units shot him 41 times. 

While Diallo’s case may have received the most media attention, police brutality – and even what many claim to be outright police-sanctioned murder – has reached epidemic proportions in New York and other cities, according to protest organizers.

Sunday’s protest, which began at Union Square, was one of 55 demonstrations scheduled for Sunday across the country.

\"(Police brutality occurs in) every major urban area where you got people of color, where you got segregation, where you got class segregation and stratification, and gentrification. At this point it is a national epidemic,\" said Steven Francisco of the New York City PoliceWatch, part of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights.

\"It is really rooted in our own history in terms of class, in terms of race, so anywhere those two things come together you are going to see the need for a group that monitors police abuse,\" Francisco told the IMC.

Throughout the afternoon, speakers and demonstrators called for the federal government to oversee the city’s troubled police department and to prosecute officers involved in police brutality.

\"I believe my son was murdered in cold blood, justice must prevail, justice must prevail,\" said Saikou Diallo during an interview yesterday shortly before the march began. \"I want the federal government to come and prosecute those police officers who murdered my son under the federal Civil Rights law.\"

Founder of the Parents Against Police Brutality, Margaret Rosario, whose son Carmen was shot and killed in 1995 by New York police officers, called for several reforms needed in order to rectify the situation.

\"First of all Mayor Giuliani needs to step down from any type of office – ever since he became mayor he has given the green light to these cops to kill knowing that they are not going to be punished,\" said Rosario. \"Second we need to change the 48-hour rule and finally we need an independent CCRB (Civilian Complaint Review Board) because it is impossible for the police to police themselves.\"

Fernandez, of the New York PoliceWatch, offered other suggestions for reform.

\"I would advocate for increase of community-trained cops, definitely the decrease in the number of cops,\" Fernandez said. \"Our police force in terms of its size is larger than most country’s armies which says something about the police state that exists in the U.S.\"

Hundreds of youths helped organize Sunday’s event and participated in the march.

The Westchester, N.Y.-based Students for Social Justice sent about 35 members to the march.
 
\"The Police are meant to protect people not to hurt them and people need to feel safe from the police and not threatened by them,\" said the group’s president Jeremy Fischer, who noted the need for the youth to get involved in the anti-police brutality movement.

\"If the police keep killing people for no reason then no one will have any justice,\" added eight-year-old Kasele Kassally who was handing out flyers promoting a protest to \"Stop the Death Machine… (and) the legal lynching of Mumia Abu-Jamal.\"

On Mumia, Kassally said \"I don’t think he should be in jail right now or on death row because I don’t really think he did anything to the police.\"

Kassally was one of dozens of young children whose parents brought them to the demonstration.

\"I want my son to have a future,\" said Wade Fareed Salaam, noting how young many of the victims of police brutality have been. \"I want my son to be exposed to being an activist for a good cause. We need to stop police brutality and racial profiling.\"

For LaAnthoney, Salaam’s 10-year-old son, the reason to march Sunday was clear: \"so the police stop killing people just like Amadou Diallo.\"

A graduate student at Hunter College who identified herself as Sonya said police brutality must be seen as a public health problem.
 
\"I come from a community that experiences this all the time… It totally changes families, it changes neighborhoods - it puts neighborhoods on the defense. We feel targeted and that is definitely a public health issue it is a social public issue.\"

During the march Sonya passed out literature on the Stolen Lives project, which has documented the stories of some 2,000 men and women victimized and killed by the police.

\"It is now going to be published in Spanish and we are trying to let people know that. We want to reach the Latino community where a lot of this is happening,\" she said.

When the march ended, demonstrators gathered to here directly from the family victims of police brutality including Diallo, Rosario and others.

Others compared the New York City treatment of minority groups with those of the South African government during the height of apartheid.

\"The police department in this city has a procedure reminiscent of the South African pass laws: you are stopped and asked for ID, why you are where you are; you have no civil rights if this can be done to you without recourse,\" said Andrea Fields, whose 17-year-old son, Andre, was shot dead by an undercover detectives in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

Fields’ offense? \"Attacking\" police with a toy gun.