REPORT: N.Y. COPS SINGLED OUT BLACKS, LATINOS

Federal Probe Shows Special Unit Engaged In 'Racial Profiling' As A Search
Criterion

NEW YORK -- A federal investigation of the New York Police Department's
Street Crime Unit has determined that its officers engaged in so-called
racial profiling as they conducted their aggressive campaign of street
searches across the city, officials said.

Prosecutors in Manhattan, who began their investigation in the weeks after
the 1999 shooting death of Amadou Diallo, are now in talks with the
administration of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to discuss their findings and
perhaps to negotiate a set of changes that would avert a lawsuit, the
officials said.

If the talks fail, the officials said, prosecutors could seek authorization
from Attorney General Janet Reno to go to court under civil rights law and
ask a judge to order broad changes in the operations of the Street Crime
Unit and possible oversight by a federal monitor.

Prosecutors have based their findings on a statistical analysis of the
Street Crime Unit's searches of people its officers had stopped because
they were suspected of committing crimes or carrying guns, one official
said. The analysis concluded that blacks and Latinos in the city were
disproportionately singled out in the searches, and that the imbalance
could not be explained by the fact that the city's minority neighborhoods
typically had higher crime rates.

Mary Jo White, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York,
whose office made the finding, would not comment other than to say her
office's investigation was continuing.

Giuliani and police have in the past adamantly rejected allegations of
racial profiling. They did so when New York state Attorney General Eliot L.
Spitzer issued a report late last year saying the department's
street-search tactics unfairly singled out the city's black and Latino
residents.

The Street Crime Unit -- squads of elite undercover officers that were sent
into high-crime sections of the city -- was seen by the department as one
of its great successes, the unit's ability to get guns off the street
having played a large role in reducing crime.

The performance and conduct of the unit came under intense scrutiny after
Diallo, an unarmed African immigrant, was shot to death in the hallway of
his Bronx apartment building by four members of the unit.