HOUSTON MOVES AGAINST RACIAL PROFILING

HOUSTON - Police officers who stop people because of their skin color may
find themselves out of a job under a new city initiative.

Mayor Lee Brown and Police Chief C.O. Bradford unveiled a plan yesterday to
study whether any of the city's 5,000 police officers are stopping drivers
because of their race or ethnicity.

"I never want to hear any of our citizens say they were stopped solely
because of driving while black," said Brown, the city's first black mayor.

Houston, the nation's fourth-largest city, is just of one several
metropolitan cities - including San Diego and San Jose, Calif. - to attack
racial profiling, which has gained national attention in the past year.

In June, President Clinton issued an executive order calling for federal
law-enforcement agencies to collect race and gender data in all stops and
arrests. State lawmakers around the nation have scrambled to pass similar
legislation, but only North Carolina has enacted laws.

Houston's new program, which will begin immediately, requires officers to
enter information on the race, age and gender of all people they stop or
arrest into their patrol-car computers. The reports will be placed in a
database for review by Bradford, police managers and the department's
Internal Affairs Division.

Any confirmed incidents of racial profiling could result in a guilty
officer's dismissal or even criminal charges. Several patrolmen's
associations and civil-rights groups applauded the new policies.