U.S. Rights Panel Says NYPD Uses Racial Profiling

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights found Friday that the New York Police Department widely uses improper racial profiling to stop and question blacks and Latinos, contributing to turbulent racial tensions that can escalate into “tragic and unnecessary” events like the police shooting of unarmed Amadou Diallo.

New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani called the conclusion a “politicized report that bears no relation to reality.”

The commission also questioned department training and recruitment of black and Latino officers and recommended creation of an independent office to investigate allegations of police wrongly using deadly force.

“The city of New York must maintain a world-class police force that provides protection against illegal activities, including civil rights violations by its own officers, for all of its diverse populations,” Commission Chairwoman Mary Frances Berry said, reading from the report’s summary.

“Everywhere, African Americans were stopped far out of their proportion in any of the communities policed,” Berry added. “So were Hispanics, but at somewhat reduced levels.”

For example, the commission review of the NYPD’s “stop and frisk” tactics found that two years ago, 51% of the people stopped and searched in Staten Island were black, while the borough’s population is only 9% black.

Racial profiling--the singling out of suspects based solely on ethnicity or skin color--has gained increased national attention in recent months as investigations uncovered its frequent use at the Customs Department and other law enforcement agencies around the country. Experts say such practices undermine police authority and reduce deterrence to crime.

“For the police to be effective, they must have the trust and cooperation of the people they serve,” said Hubert Williams, a former police official in Newark, N.J., and president of the nonprofit Police Foundation research group. “Often, the communities most in need of effective policing because of high crime rates are the very communities most distrustful of the police.”

Evidence the commission gathered belied NYPD contentions that blacks and Latinos were stopped more frequently because they matched crime victims’ descriptions of perpetrators, Berry said.

“They simply stop who they think they should stop,” she said. “The NYPD needs to be careful not to engage in racial profiling of this sort . . . it not only violates the law but undermines respect for the police and can cause deadly altercations, as in the tragic and unnecessary police shooting of Amadou Diallo.”

Diallo was shot and killed outside his Bronx home on Feb. 4, 1999. Police fired 41 bullets at the unarmed man, hitting him 19 times. The four officers involved--who said they believed Diallo was going for a weapon--were acquitted of any crime earlier this year.

The Diallo shooting prompted the commission to investigate police-racial issues in New York.

The report, advisory in nature, was approved by the civil rights commission on a 6-2 vote Friday, with Republican Carl Anderson and independent Russell Redenbaugh against. The panel, appointed by the president and congressional leaders, has four Democrats, three independents and one Republican.

In an earlier rebuttal to a draft report, city officials contended the commission’s work was “shoddy” and relied too heavily on police critics such as the Rev. Al Sharpton. Before Giuliani dropped out of the U.S. Senate race, there were also claims the probe was intended to embarrass the mayor and bolster the candidacy of First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Giuliani said New York had been singled out for criticism and noted that statistics show the NYPD’s use of force has declined for six straight years.

“In fact, the commission has not visited or investigated a single other city, despite the fact that the police departments of many other cities have restraint records that are not nearly as good as the NYPD’s,” Giuliani said in a statement.

Commission member Redenbaugh said he did not think the facts supported the racial profiling conclusions and he gave officials credit for the city’s sharp drop in murder and other serious crimes.

“The notion that the racial mix of who you stop ought to resemble the racial mix of the people in the neighborhood is a specious use of statistics,” Redenbaugh said. “I don’t know if there is racial profiling or not.”

Still, the commission’s majority found that unlike other major cities, New York’s department has not fully adopted community policing practices that minimize racial tensions and that its training program “reinforces stereotypes instead of undermining them.”

The report recommended that police recruits have at least a two-year college degree before they join the force, saying officers without that minimum education level are more likely to have complaints.