CUTTING CRIME, KEEPING OUR RIGHTS

The recent police shootings of Amadou Diallo and
Patrick Dorismond exposed a seemingly intractable problem. How can
police aggressively keep guns and drugs off the street, while
respecting the civil rights of citizens? The Op-Ed Page asked a few
experts.

Frank Serpico is the former New York City police detective who
testified about police corruption in the 1970's.

We can have a safe society where the civil rights of individual
citizens are not capriciously violated. What can be done? The mayor
must reverse his vetoes of an independent audit board on police
misconduct. There must be better psychological screening of recruits
to ensure that they are the type of people that we want maintaining
order and protecting our streets.

There must be better training of recruits and instructors in the
academies, which includes training in psychology, ethics and
specialized combat. The rule that allows police officers involved in
shootings to take 48 hours before they tell their story must be abolished.

Minority representation in the police department must be increased.
The office of the special prosecutor that was created as a result of
the Knapp Commission hearings was disbanded in the 80's as no longer
necessary. We need to reappoint a special prosecutor now to look into
matters of police misconduct. There must be an end to selective
enforcement of drug and weapons violations. We must have a mayor and
police commissioner who have a greater respect for the racial,
economic and cultural diversity of the citizens of New York.

H. Richard Uviller is a law professor at Columbia University.

I'm for gun control of all kinds.

But even the most comprehensive program will make little difference in
our high rate of gun violence. Guns used in crime are rarely licensed.

The only way to reduce gun crime is to go after the unlawful guns
secretly carried by dangerous people. And the only way to do that is
for police to approach suspicious people, to expand traffic stops to
include a search for guns and yes, even to stop cars and people,
lawfully, as a pretext for a gun frisk. The Supreme Court has said
such stops are constitutional. True, the court recently (and
unfortunately) held that the unverified tip from an anonymous informer
does not justify a stop and frisk, even where the information is that
a described person is carrying a gun. But all that means to a
resourceful cop is that the tip will be verified by some other
suspicious circumstance.

Aggressive street patrol is the most effective strategy for illegal
handgun interdiction. But "aggressive" does not mean brutal or
abusive, much less murderous. Officers assigned to these gun runs must
be carefully selected and rigorously trained. It's not the only way to
reduce violence, but it is a critical component of any sane policy.

Geoffrey Canada is president of the Rheedlen Centers for Children and
Families.

I would start with more training and better screening of undercover
police officers. And then I would insist that all undercover officers
wear a wireless microphone that records all verbal exchanges with
suspected criminals. The recordings should not only be made of the
officer doing the buy or bust, but of the back-up officers as well.
This tape should be a permanent part of the arrest record and should
be reviewed by superior officers routinely.

These tapes would give answers to potentially important questions. How
were suspects approached? What verbal exchanges occurred? What did
back-up officers say (or not say) to suspects? The tapes could point
police superiors to undercover officers who were inappropriate,
overzealous or racist. It would also provide many training
opportunities for officers and important, albeit incomplete,
information to the public about why officers used deadly force.

Mathea Falco, president of Drug Strategies, a nonprofit research
institute, was assistant secretary of state for international
narcotics matters in the Carter administration.

The fatal police shooting of Patrick Dorismond shows once again that
we cannot arrest our way out of our drug problems. Using undercover
officers to approach apparently law-abiding citizens and to try to
entrap them in a crime completely distorts law enforcement's
legitimate goal of making communities safer.

Although politicians like "street sweeps" for their public relations
value, they do not have any lasting impact and too often violate
individual rights and increase distrust of the police. But as numerous
studies have shown, sustained community policing -- in which officers
work closely with neighborhood residents -- can drive out street dealers.

Patrick J. Lynch is president of the Patrolmen's Benevolent
Association.

Keeping one's balance between effective policing and showing the
proper respect for your fellow New Yorkers takes a skilled acrobatic
performance. But that tightrope stretches precariously when cops are
feeling cheated by their contract, criticized by the community, used
by the politicians and pressured by their bosses.

The notion that our cops are trigger-happy or out of control is
unsupported by facts or statistics. But you can't counter this
misconception unless you communicate with the community.

The pressure to produce numbers is a flawed approach to law
enforcement. Quality of arrests is more important than quantity.
Officers are not unwilling to go after the low-level criminal, but
these arrests shouldn't simply satisfy a production schedule or risk
lives. So to restore lost faith, we must tone down the politics, turn
up the dialogue, do away with quotas and pay cops a living wage.

Richard E. Green is head of the Crown Heights Youth Collective in
Brooklyn.

Yes, the police need to change tactics. But the community must also be
ready to de-escalate the "scold" war it has conducted against the
police and the Giuliani administration, and show the same level of
moral indignation when young people lose their lives at the hands of
one another. Since the shooting of Amadou Diallo, I have known four
young people who have lost their lives due to violence.

The clergy, Mayor Giuliani, police officers and community leaders must
come together to develop solutions.

Our community leaders should consider patrolling their own schools
(which is done in Philadelphia) and setting voluntary curfews for our
youth. To make our communities safe, we must stop maligning all
officers and start working with them.

George L. Kelling is the co-author of "Fixing Broken Windows: Restoring
Order and Reducing Crime in Our Communities."

Aside from the underlying political fight, two important policing
issues are raised by the recent shootings.

Special units, such as the street crimes unit and anti-drug operations
like Operation Condor, can be effective tools, but they can also be
troublesome and potentially dangerous. While special units have been
important ingredients in the police department's crime-reduction
efforts, they tend to be remote from neighborhoods and
communities.

The second issue is police planning. Police increasingly rely on
analysis of crime data, mapping and other methods to develop tactics
for addressing specific problems. When they discover that guns are the
primary instruments of murder in black neighborhoods, is it racial
profiling or smart policing to target anti-gun efforts there?

Resolutions to these issues are possible, but not easy. They involve
balancing individual rights with community interests, effectiveness
with costs, and the tradeoffs among important values. Getting out of
the current political mess, however, is the first step. Police and
neighborhood leaders will have to seek each other out aggressively and
honestly. Then, they can get back to the business of improving policing.