SECOND OPINIONS : Learning About Police Harassment--Firsthand : It’s hard to believe the statistics when you’ve always respected the law. But the bias becomes clear when a relative, stopped for a traffic citation, ends up in jail.

Recently, in part because of the hype generated by the O.J. Simpson trial, Detective Mark Fuhrman’s racist comments and the alleged mistreatment of African Americans by the Los Angeles Police Department, I was taken back to my days as a Cal State Northridge “re-entry student,” when, to fulfill a class requirement, I researched a community-based group that in the 1970s organized to combat perceived abuses by police.

The group, Coalition Against Police Abuse (CAPA), staffed by volunteer lawyers, community activists (white, Chicano, black), was located in a tiny L.A. office; its primary purpose was to investigate incidents of police brutality in the L.A. area.

I arrived at the semimonthly meeting on a cold November day, apprehensive at being among those who questioned the role of police. Once accepted by the group (it helped that I was sent by Rudolfo Acuna, the Chicano activist and CSUN professor), I found my way to the back of the room, accepted coffee, sat to listen--and observe.

I was appalled to know that people like me--parents, churchgoers, active members of a community--saw fit to question the practices of men sworn to protect our cities. I felt uneasy, aware that, in my neighborhood of predominantly white families, the local police were considered a stabilizing force. In fact, one of our neighbors had recently graduated from the police academy! Still, my job was to note facts, be objective, write a 30-page research paper and pass the course.

That night I learned a new vocabulary: police deployment, false arrest, detention, 72-hour holds. That part was easy. What was difficult to swallow were the statistics. It seems that police brutality against Mexican Americans was rampant in barrios similar to Pacoima, where I was raised. I learned of a comparative study by Armando Morales, a UCLA professor, which found that an increase in police deployment in Chicano and black ghettos led to increased altercations between residents and cops, and many more arrests, while upscale communities such as Glendale and San Marino, less patrolled, had fewer arrests.

I began to count the times I saw a police car in my neighborhood. A call to the Foothill Division informed me that, because of budget-crunching, a maximum of two squad cars were assigned to our community. Often, officers took an hour to respond.

Once my course was completed, I forgot about CAPA and its statistics, wanting only to believe the police, whom I felt were basically fair, were my friends. And then one day, due to a faulty headlight, my son and his girlfriend were stopped near Sunland Park; his car was searched. Police found his favorite hiking stick, assumed it was a weapon (he was Chicano, for God sakes!) and hauled him off to jail. His girlfriend followed, met bail, then drove him home.

I found it odd that my son did not put up a verbal struggle. Later, he admitted that while angry, he was scared stiff of the police, so went along. A cousin who is an attorney, got him cleared of all charges. But what if we’d lived in East L.A.? Would he have been jailed as a gang member? Would he now have a record?

Sometime later, a friend related a similar incident. One Friday night, her daughter, Celia, and friends, all Chicanas, went partying after a football game. Feeling groovy, they ran a red light and were pulled over by police. Petrified at being caught with open wine coolers in the car, the young women tried to talk their way out of the mess but were ordered out of the car and lined up against the chain-link fence that borders Sunland Park. Just then Celia’s Anglo novio , wearing his varsity jacket, pulled up in his car. The police recognized him as one of their own, gave the young women a tongue-lashing, then let them go.

It hurts to know that my son (he played varsity football too) did not receive the same treatment, although he, too, was wearing his varsity jacket when he was detained. More to the point, it is difficult for those of us--Chicanos, African Americans, Asians, law-abiding citizens--to admit that the law favors whites. But it does.