STOPS AND FRISKS

To the Editor:

Re "Mayor Backs Bill to Make Police Report Race in Frisks" (news article,
July 26):

Trumpeting of a City Council bill that would make racial statistics of
police arrests more available to the public is premature. As far as making
data on stop-and-frisk arrests available to the public, the new rules would
likely involve only the numbers already analyzed by the Police Department.
Statistics often conceal more than they disclose. What is needed is to make
the entire paper trail of every arrest public and transparent.

More important, the bill doesn't address the primary problem with stops and
frisks -- the state attorney general's office says only one out of every
five or six stop-and-frisk incidents is actually reported. Until this issue
is addressed, the city can be congratulated on its public relations, but
not on real police reform.

WILLIAM GOODMAN
Legal Director Center for Constitutional Rights
New York