CHIEFS TO SHAPE U.S. TRAFFIC-STOP POLICY

Police chiefs from some of the nation's largest departments said Friday they
will create a national traffic-stop policy that they said will ensure that
minorities are not unfairly targeted.

The police chiefs made the announcement at a news conference with minority
activists to launch what they described as an honest discussion on police
and race. It came after a day of closed-door meetings between police
executives and community leaders coordinated by the Police Executive
Research Forum.

"If we are to deal with it, we must stipulate that race is an issue in
policing," Philadelphia Police Commissioner John Timoney said. "There are an
awful lot of people in denial, but so be it. We must move forward."

Public attention has been focused on police conduct since February's fatal
shooting of Amadou Diallo in the Bronx borough of New York City.

Four officers from New York's elite street crimes unit fired 41 shots at
Diallo, an unarmed West African immigrant, hitting him 19 times. His killing
prompted numerous protests in New York and Washington. The officers have
been charged with second-degree murder.

In North Carolina, members of the state House voted this week to require the
Highway Patrol and other state police to keep detailed records of the race,
gender and age of all drivers stopped.

The bill, written by Sen. Frank Ballance, D-Warren, a lawyer who says he has
represented many blacks stopped for no reason, orders the state attorney
general to make an annual report on the statistics.

The Senate has yet to give the bill a final OK, and Gov. Jim Hunt would have
to sign it before it can become law.

Highway Patrol leaders have backed the in-depth analysis, and they've made
plans to launch their own study this year.

The still-evolving national traffic stop policy would stress courtesy to
build respect between minorities and police.

One guideline being discussed would require officers to tell drivers why
they had been stopped and to apologize if no violations are found.

The Justice Department is investigating allegations of racial profiling --
targeting minorities for an unjustified amount of police attention -- by the
New Jersey State Police and by police agencies in Eastpointe, Mich., and
Orange County, Fla.

In New Jersey, Gov. Christie Whitman fired State Police Superintendent Carl
Williams following published remarks in which he said minorities were
responsible for most of the cocaine and marijuana traffic.

Attorney General Janet Reno expressed serious concerns about racial
profiling in comments to reporters Thursday, and she discussed it at a
private meeting with the gathered police chiefs.

Some of the 35 chiefs and activists at the conference also discussed
adopting a program like one used in San Diego where police record the race
of people they stop.

That information is used to assess whether police are relying on racial
profiling in making traffic stops.

But Baltimore Police Chief Thomas Frazier, president of the Police Executive
Research Forum, said no consensus had been reached on whether it would be
workable for a national model.

Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., said that without a meaningful way of tracking
who was being stopped by police and why, the traffic stop policy would be
"only window dressing."

"I don't think it will eliminate the problem at all because you're still
going to have one person's word against the other, and one of those people
is a cop," said Meeks, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus. "It's
meaningless."

Frazier said there were no plans to create a national policy on
controversial stop-and-frisk practices like those used by the NYPD's street
crimes unit.

Such procedures are largely governed by individual states' case law, and it
creating a national model would be difficult, he said.