Reno Seeks Easing of Police Tensions

In her strongest and most emotional language to date on the subject, Atty. Gen. Janet Reno on Thursday decried the worsening tensions nationwide between police and many of the people they are charged with protecting, and she urged a redoubled effort to confront the problem.

“For too many people, especially in minority communities, the trust that is so essential to effective policing does not exist because residents believe that police have used excessive force, that law enforcement is too aggressive, that law enforcement is biased, disrespectful and unfair,” Reno said in a speech to the National Press Club.

The sharp words from Reno, the nation’s highest-ranking law-enforcement officer and a longtime supporter of local police, came on the same day that thousands of New York City demonstrators protested high-profile police attacks on two immigrants. Although the timing was a coincidence, Justice Department officials said the rising tensions in New York helped trigger Reno’s call-to-action on the issue of police conduct.

The attorney general said her heart goes out to the family of New Yorker Amadou Diallo, an unarmed man shot 19 times by officers as he stood in the doorway of his apartment building one February evening. But Reno warned that the problem is far broader than the killing of Diallo.

“The issue is not just one city,” she said. “The issue is national in scope and reaches people all across this country.”

Reno went so far as to use one of her biggest successes--a six-year drop in crime nationwide--to demonstrate her point. She said some Americans, particularly minorities, wonder whether the drop is a result not of safer streets, but of aggressive police trampling on their civil liberties.

Introducing several new ideas and announcing plans to move ahead more forcefully on others, Reno offered an array of proposals aimed at better understanding the depth of the problem and finding ways to address it, including:

-- Expanding a Justice Department crime survey of Americans nationwide to include questions such as: “During the last year, have you had an encounter with the police in which any physical force was used?” Efforts to collect such information before have met with “only limited success,” she said.

-- Pushing local police departments to keep data on traffic stops--as is now being done in San Diego--to better assess the frequency of “racial profiling” and harassment of minority motorists. A bill to require the Justice Department to collect such data from all local police was reintroduced in Congress this week.

-- Holding police to higher standards of accountability for responding to citizen complaints of mistreatment and evaluating their own performances. As models, she pointed to the Los Angeles Police Department’s creation of an inspector general position in the wake of the Rodney G. King beating, as well as the use of an outside monitor at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

-- Seeking an expanded budget for federal investigations of police departments that have allegedly engaged in broad patterns of civil rights violations against minorities and others.

Reno said she also wants to convene a conference of law-enforcement officials, community leaders, civil rights advocates and others to develop new strategies on the issue. Justice Department officials said they expect a summit in Washington in the next two months, with the possibility of follow-up community meetings around the country.

The attorney general was careful to salute the vast majority of the country’s 700,000 police officers, who she said are hard-working and honorable. But, she said, “we as a society cannot tolerate officers who cross the line and abuse their position by mistreating law-abiding citizens or who bring their own racial bias to the job of policing.”

Some of Reno’s ideas--particularly collecting data on traffic stops and surveying people on police violence--are sure to draw opposition from police groups. But NAACP official Hilary Shelton, who heard the speech, saw Reno’s remarks as a key boost for civil-rights advocates.

“She’s definitely taking us in the right direction. It’s quite refreshing that we have an attorney general who’s obviously hearing us,” he said. “It’s unprecedented for her to stand up and say these things about the police.”

But he added that “it’s still not quite enough.”

Although Reno’s focus on tracking data is encouraging, he said, there needs to be more emphasis on establishing effective community oversight boards--with independent power and separate funding--to monitor police. Even the LAPD’s police commission and its inspector general position, lauded by Reno, fall short in this regard, Shelton added.

LAPD officials said Thursday they were confident the department already meets the goals laid out by Reno, in large part because of the reforms mandated by the Christopher Commission after the King beating in 1991.

“The last thing we want to do is to raise fears among the public about the way police respond to them,” said Lt. Anthony Alba.

Reno pointed to departments in Los Angeles, Boston, Baltimore, San Antonio and others around the country that she said have succeeded in making significant reforms and strengthening the bonds with their communities.

The challenge, she said, comes in expanding that effort.

“There is a problem. America is beginning to face it,” she said. “It is a situation that must be solved.”