COMMISSIONER BANS PROFILING USING RACE BY THE POLICE

Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly has issued a strongly worded order to
his top commanders against the use of racial profiling as a tool for
arrests, car stops or any other law enforcement actions.

Although the Police Department has never acknowledged that it engages in
racial profiling — the use of race, ethnicity or national origin as clues
to criminality — Mr. Kelly said he put out the order to make the
department's position clear among officers and the public.

Police officials said the order, the first of its kind issued by the
department, takes admonitions from its existing guidelines, as well as from
legal rulings on the issue, and puts them in one policy statement so that
no one will be confused about the department's stance.

"I think this has been the policy all along, but it is important to state
it in written form," Mr. Kelly said. "This has been an area of concern to
members of minority communities in the past. There is at least the
perception, in some people's minds, that racial profiling goes on, and we
want to have a clear statement of what the policy of this department is as
far as racial profiling is concerned."

As the United States customs commissioner in the Clinton administration,
Mr. Kelly gained a reputation for taking action to curb racial profiling.
At the time, critics said the Customs Service unfairly singled out black
and Hispanic people for searches at airports and other ports of entry.

But Mr. Kelly studied the issue in 1999, and was widely credited with
finding more efficient ways to intercept contraband at border crossings
than using racial profiling, a practice President Clinton called "morally
indefensible." Mr. Kelly developed objective criteria for customs agents to
identify odd behavior among people crossing the border, with an eye toward
stopping drug smuggling.

Mr. Kelly, who said he was close to naming someone to direct and possibly
revamp the way the Police Department trains officers, noted yesterday,
"Obviously, the issue of racial profiling is something that has to be
addressed in the training environment."

He repeatedly stressed that the order, which was made public yesterday and
will be read at precinct station house roll calls and pinned to bulletin
boards, was not based on any failures he had noticed in departmental
procedure or practice.

But it became apparent after the fatal shooting of Amadou Diallo in 1999
that many black and Hispanic New Yorkers believed that the department
engaged in racial profiling, with many suggesting that it was Mr. Diallo's
race that led the police to approach him. And the state attorney general's
office found that year that blacks and Hispanics were much more likely than
whites to be stopped and frisked.

Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union,
hailed the new policy as "an important and long overdue step forward" for
an agency that, she charged, had previously refused to take a clear stand
against racial profiling even while controversies over the issue have roiled.

"Racial profiling has always been illegal, because it violates the U.S. and
State Constitution," Ms. Lieberman said. "But this policy lays the basis
for disciplinary proceedings against officers who engage in the practice,
so it adds an additional layer for enforcement."

The one-page statement orders commanding officers of precincts to establish
a self-inspection system. And it directs the department's quality-assurance
division to see that officers comply with the order. Compstat, the
computer-based crime-tracking system, will be also used to measure compliance.

David A. Harris, a professor of law and values at the University of Toledo
College of Law and the author of "Profiles in Injustice: Why Racial
Profiling Cannot Work" (The New Press, 2002), said a number of other cities
and states had put policies against racial profiling into writing in the
past two years.

"In itself, the New York policy is not unusual," Professor Harris said.
"What is important here is that the N.Y.P.D. is a force that, for years,
has refused even in the face of very clear evidence to acknowledge the
existence of racial profiling. This policy shows them facing the issue head
on, and Ray Kelly is the man who can do it."