PANEL CALLS FOR PROSECUTOR IN POLICE CASES By STEVEN A. HOLMES

WASHINGTON, June 16 -- The United States Civil Rights Commission today
called on New York City to create a mechanism for the appointment of
independent prosecutors to investigate serious accusations of police
misconduct. The recommendation was contained in the panel's final report on
the practices of the city's police force. The report released today is a
more refined version of a draft that was circulated in April.

The draft had suggested an independent mechanism was needed for such
investigations but did not specifically suggest the use of a prosecutor.

The commission has no power to force the city to adopt its proposals, and
the report left unspecificed the details of how to appoint such
prosecutors, suggesting it would be up to the mayor and the City Council.
Such a process might also require state legislative approval.

The commission voted 6 to 2 today to adopt the staff report with dissenting
views from Carl A. Anderson, and Russell G. Redenbaugh, who were named to
the commission by Congressional Republicans in 1996.

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani swiftly attacked the final report, saying in a
statement that the commission had "embarrassed itself by released a
politicized report that bears no relation to reality."

The mayor did not specifically address any of the report's findings or
recommendations, although his administration had already released a
detailed rebuttal to the preliminary findings.

The 248-page final report followed the general outlines of the draft
published in April. The commission endorsed the appointment of an
independent board that would oversee the Police Department's disciplinary
process and documented what the commission said was extensive racial
profiling by police officers, including the Street Crime Unit, the
aggressive plainclothes unit involved in the fatal shooting of Amadou
Diallo, an unarmed immigrant, in the Bronx in 1999. That shooting sparked
the commission's inquiry.

The report also recommended stepped up efforts to recruit minorities, new
efforts to improve police-community relations and abolishment of the
so-called 48-hour rule, a union contract provision that allows officers
charged with a specific case of abuse to delay by two days being
interviewed by their superiors about it.

But the most striking recommendation was the ad hoc appointment of an
independent prosecutor to handle allegations of egregeous misconduct, such
as a shooting of an unarmed civilian by police officers.

According to report, the independent counsel should come from an private
law firm, rather than from a federal or state prosecutor's office. The
panel said using an independent prosecutor would reassure the public that
the allegations would be thoroughly investigated.

The report did not say who should prosecute such cases in court after the
independent investigation.

In addition to the recommendations, the commission report also detailed
what it said was extensive racial profiling by the police department.
Examining nearly 140,000 forms filled out by police officers after they
stopped and questioned or frisked people on the street in 1998, the
commission staff found that African-Americans were stopped "far out of
their proportion in any of the communities." Hispanic people were also
stopped at a relatively high rate, but less so than black people. And
whites and Asians were stopped at far below their representation of the
population, it concluded.

For example, 51.6 per cent of individuals who were stopped and frisked on
Staten Island in 1998 were black and 15.5 per cent were Hispanic. The
report noted that the borough's population is only 9 per cent black and 8.6
per cent Hispanic.

In making this assertion, the commission disputed the view of Mayor
Giuliani and top police officials that the disparity in the number of
people who were stopped and questioned merely reflected people who were
identified as suspects by crime victims and witnesses.

This claim, the report noted, is belied by the admission by police that
police divisions including the Street Crimes Unit root out crime by making
stops when no complaints have been lodged and no victims identified. "They
stop who they think they should stop," said Mary Fraces Berry, chairwoman
of the commission.

But Mr. Redenbaugh disagreed that police were deliberately targeting
minorities.

"The notion that the racial mix of who you stop ought to resemble the
racial mix of the people in the neighborhood is a specious use of
statistics," he said. "I don't know if there is racial profiling or not."