Ten years ago today, a 30-year-old Haitian immigrant named Abner Louima was arrested and sodomized with a broomstick inside a restroom in the 70th Precinct station house in Brooklyn. The case became a national symbol of police brutality and fed perceptions that New York City police officers were harassing or abusing young black men as part a citywide crackdown on crime.



The case also marked the beginning of the unraveling of Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani’s relationship with the black community in New York. That relationship would deteriorate even further, after the police shot two unarmed black men, Amadou Diallo in February 1999 and Patrick Dorismond in 2000.

One officer, Justin A. Volpe, admitted in court in May 1999 that he had rammed a broken broomstick into Mr. Louima’s rectum and then thrust it in his face. He said he had mistakenly believed that Mr. Louima had punched him in the head during a street brawl outside a nightclub in Flatbush, but he acknowledged that he had also intended to humiliate the handcuffed immigrant. He left the force and was later sentenced to 30 years in prison. The commanders of the 70th Precinct were replaced within days of the assault. As the legal case wore on, Charles Schwarz, a former police officer, was sentenced in federal court in 2002 to five years in prison for perjury stemming from the torture case. A jury found that Mr. Schwarz had lied when he testified that he had not taken Mr. Louima to the station house bathroom where the assault took place.

Mr. Louima, who was born in Thomassin, Haiti, in 1966, and immigrated to New York in 1991, suffered a ruptured bladder and colon and spent two months in the hospital. The charges against him were dropped. Mr. Louima’s case animated anxieties about the Giuliani administration. (Mr. Louima at one point claimed that police officers shouted ”It’s Giuliani time!” as they tortured him; he later retracted that account.)

Mr. Louima won $8.7 million in settlements with the city and the police union — the largest police brutality settlement in the city’s history. Afterward, he moved to Florida.

In addition to Mr. Volpe and Mr. Schwarz, two other officers, Thomas Bruder and Thomas Wiese, were implicated in the case. They were convicted of obstruction of justice, but the convictions were overturned in 2002. They were unsuccessful in their attempt to be reinstated in the Police Department.

As this anniversary approached, Mr. Louima, 40, has been back in the news recently, speaking out against police brutality. “I feel we have made some progress in reducing police brutality over the past 10 years, but I also believe there is still a lot to be done,” he wrote in a guest column published in The Daily News on Sunday. “Things may have improved a bit, but not enough. To name just one example, look at Sean Bell, who last year was shot and killed by police while leaving a nightclub in Queens.”

Also on Sunday, The News published a retrospective of the case. In a column today, Errol Louis of The News discusses the legacy of the case. The News has also put together a collection of articles by the columnist Mike McAlary, who wrote extensively about the case in 1997. Mr. McAlary died of colon cancer in 1998.

On July 30, The New York Post published a profile of Mr. Louima, reporting that he lived a comfortable life in Miami Lakes, Fla., with his wife and three children. The family owns several luxury cars. Mr. Louima has established a charity to support causes in Haiti.

Mr. Louima was evidently not happy with the portrayal of his prosperous lifestyle, according to Newsday. A Newsday article published on Sunday focused on Mr. Louima’s activism against police brutality. “Maybe God figured I was the one to make it public,” Mr. Louima told Newsday. “God wanted me to suffer, he had a plan for me.”

The Associated Press published an account of the case today to mark the anniversary. At 7:30 p.m., Mr. Louima is scheduled to join the Rev. Al Sharpton at the National Action Network, Mr. Sharpton’s political organization, at 106 West 145th Street in Harlem, for a discussion of the legacy of the case.

Al Baker contributed reporting.