TO THE EDITOR: New York City Police Commissioner Howard Safir
criticizes the unanimous vote of no-confidence in him by 400
Patrolmen's Benevolent Association delegates as politically motivated
(front page, April 14). I write as a 17-year veteran of the N.Y.P.D.
and a former police chief of San Jose who survived a vote of
no-confidence by that city's police union.

Four New York City police officers have been charged with murder for
the shooting of Amadou Diallo, and under Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani the
department has suffered terrible scandals.

The P.B.A.'s charge that the Mayor has set the climate for such
atrocities by adopting an errant style of policing should not be
dismissed as politics.

When police officers are put under pressure by politicians to produce
good statistics, bad things happen to members of minority groups.

Whatever its motivation, the P.B.A.'s charge that police officers are
under political pressure to make arrests deserves a fair analysis.

Joseph D. McNamara Stanford, Calif., The writer is a research fellow
at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University