PLAN FOR POLICE FALLS SHORT

The mayor's goal for reforming the Denver police is laudable. He says
he wants to "create a culture of excellence ... that breeds respect
among the citizens and among the police." But his plan for achieving
it overlooks the reason that respect does not exist.

There's no accountability.

Without the guarantee that rogue cops with itchy trigger fingers and
reputations for lying under oath will receive swift punishment, there
will be no respect for the Denver Police Department.

The Denver P.D.'s problem is far more than a minor public-relations
misstep to be glossed over with a management change and a commitment
to stop hiring cops who've snorted cocaine. It's part of a national
epidemic of serious human-rights abuses in departments from New York
and Los Angeles to New Orleans and even tiny Steubenville, Ohio (pop.
21,000).

It's no coincidence that it follows two decades of tough-on-crime
politics, President Clinton's program to put 100,000 more police
officers on the streets, and a war on drugs that many believe can be
more accurately described as a war on minorities. Police powers in
this country are at an all-time high and so are incidents of abuse.

A 2 1/2-year study of 14 big-city police departments in the U.S. by
Human Rights Watch was scathing in its criticism, particularly
concerning "official unwillingness to deal seriously with officers who
commit abuses until high-profile cases expose longstanding negligence
or tolerance of brutality." The report cited case after case of
shootings, brutality and threats by police officers that were covered
up by their brethren in blue. Complaints - even those suggesting
serious corruption - were routinely swept aside by public officials.

"Police or public officials greet each new report of brutality with
denials or explain that the act was an aberration, while the
administrative and criminal systems that should deter these abuses by
holding officers accountable instead virtually guarantee them
impunity," the report said.

Sound familiar?

Human Rights Watch acknowledged that, like all human beings, officers
make mistakes. "Yet, precisely because police officers can make
mistakes, or allow personal bias or emotion to enter into policing -
and because they are allowed, as a last resort, to use potentially
lethal force to subdue individuals they apprehend - police must be
subjected to intense scrutiny." The report suggests that police
departments where cases of police misconduct have been documented and
little or no official response has materialized to address them are in
violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
and the Convention against Torture.

If Mayor Wellington Webb wants to restore respect for the police in
the community, he's going to have to create a system of oversight that
weeds out bad cops, disciplines those who thwart investigations into
police misconduct, guarantees that crimes by police officers are
prosecuted aggressively and restores public confidence in the
integrity of the force.

Until then, no one can rest easy.