REPORT SHOWS WHO COPS STOP

New York City police officers stopped and frisked blacks and Hispanics
at a disproportionately higher rate than whites, according to an
eight-month investigation by Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.

A review of 175,000 stop-and-frisk reports-known as UF-250s-filed
between January, 1998 and March, 1999 also found that one in nine
stops resulted in an arrest. One in seven reports did not meet the
legal standard of "reasonable suspicion" required to justify the tactic.

Spitzer was not available for an interview yesterday, but in a
prepared statement, he said: "The perception that minority residents
have been disproportionately stopped and frisked by the police is
based in reality." He did not address whether the findings indicated
evidence of racial profiling.

"We can have good, tough policing and a lower crime rate without
infringing on people's basic constitutional rights," he said, adding
that "better training and supervision of officers should be looked
at." Spitzer began the investigation after the fatal shooting in
February of Guinean immigrant Amadou Diallo by four officers with the
Street Crime Unit. Police Department critics charged that
stop-and-frisk tactics unfairly targeted minorities and violated their
civil rights.

The mayor's office declined to comment.

In a prepared statement released yesterday, Police Commissioner Howard
Safir criticized Spitzer's report, saying it "fails to raise any new
issues concerning the Police Department's stop-and-frisk practices."
"The race of the individuals stopped strongly correlates with the
descriptions of persons committing violent crime as identified by
their victims," Safir said, repeating an argument he made in April.
"Ignoring this fact is a critical flaw of the report, as it is these
descriptions that serve as the primary basis for stops by police."
Spitzer found, however, that even when higher crime rates in minority
neighborhoods were taken into account, blacks were stopped 23 percent
more and Hispanics 39 percent more often than whites.

In addition, blacks were twice as likely as whites to be stopped on
suspicion of committing a violent crime or carrying a weapon. The rate
was similar for Hispanics.

"Only 30 percent of stops are based upon the victim's description,"
Spitzer said in a written statement.

Overall, blacks make up 25 percent of the city population, but 50
percent of the people stopped, while Hispanics make up 24 percent of
the population, but 33 percent of those stopped, the report said.

Whites, on the other hand, make up 43 percent of the population, but
just 13 percent of the people stopped.

Spitzer's report also questioned whether police officers had enough
legal justification when they stopped civilians.

Under the law, an officer must have evidence that a crime has been, is
or is about to be committed. Department policy also allows the tactic
when officers believe their lives are in danger.

46rom a cross section of 10,000 UF-250s filed in eight precincts,
Spitzer's analysts found about 1,500 did not meet the "reasonable
suspicion" requirement.

Also, 2,500 of the forms did not contain enough information for
Spitzer's office to judge whether the stop was justified.

Almost one-in-four reports filed by the Street Crime Unit did not
contain a sufficient legal basis for the stop.

The 175,000 reports were collected from precincts across the city,
typed into computers by the Police Department over the spring and
summer and turned over to Spitzer's office, which worked with the
Center for Violence Research and Prevention at Columbia University.

In an unusual arrangement yesterday, Spitzer's office released a
summary of the report and a news release to the four daily newspapers
with the provision that only the Police Department and the mayor's
office be contacted for comment.