POLICE AGREE TO U.S. TRAFFIC POLICY

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Police chiefs from some of the nation's largest
departments said today 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.

The still-evolving 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 data is used to assess whether police
are, in fact, 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 yet 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.