Kennneth Boss cannot remember a time when he did not want to be a police officer.

Not when he took the police academy test early, at age 16, and had to wait four years to be hired.

Not when his first assignment was in the transit bureau, far from his dream job.

Not when he pulled out his gun on a dark Bronx street one frigid night in 1999 and fired 5 of the 41 police bullets aimed at an unarmed West African immigrant named Amadou Diallo, whose killing unleashed a torrent of rage against the Police Department.

And not now, more than seven years after a jury acquitted him and three other officers of murder charges in the Diallo case, leaving Officer Boss in a shadowy limbo that he has spent years fighting to escape, an effort he has redoubled of late.

While the other three have walked away from the department, Officer Boss, 35, is still a New York City police officer, though you might not know it by his duties.