Pubdate: Thu, 05 May 2005
Source: Post-Standard, The (NY)
Copyright: 2005, Syracuse Post-Standard
Contact:  http://www.syracuse.com/poststandard/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/686
Author: Frederic Pierce, Staff writer

RACIAL PROFILING STUDY REVISITED

City Councilor Says Revamped Form to Show Whether Police Are Basing
Stops on Race.

By January, Syracuse officials might finally have a study that shows
whether racial profiling by city police is a problem, according to a
new team of consultants hired by the city.

That would be nearly 41/2 years after city police were first required
to begin filling out forms that could be analyzed to determine whether
officers were stopping and questioning people solely because of their
skin color.

"We promised the community three or four years ago we were going to
give them a racial profiling study, and we failed," said Bill Ryan,
chairman of the Syracuse Common Council's Public Safety Committee.
"This time, we're doing it a bit differently. We're going beyond the
scope of the original ordinance, but I think that's a good thing."

This time around, the city has done more than hire an expert to
analyze the information collected by the forms. Ryan said the council
also is hiring a diversity consultant to work with the Police
Department and the community while reworked versions of the "stop"
forms are being compiled. That way, the study itself can be a learning
and teaching opportunity, regardless of what the data eventually show,
he said.

"The question is: How do we take a fine Police Department and make it
an even better department?" said David Tulin, of Pennsylvania-based
Tulin Diversiteam Associates.

Tulin will work with police officials and hold several community
meetings this summer to explore rocky spots in the relationship
between city police and residents and work out ways to improve
understanding and trust.

In the meantime, some city officers later this month will begin
filling out a revised version of the stop form first required by
former police Chief Dennis DuVal in September 2001.

After a two-week test period, all city officers will have to file the
form every time they stop a person or question someone.

By December, there should be enough information collected to begin an
analysis, said William Horrace, who began working with the city about
two weeks ago and will be hired to crunch the data from the forms. The
report should be ready by January.

Horrace, an associate economics professor at Syracuse University's
Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, and Tulin will be
paid about $25,000, Ryan said. That's the amount the council set aside
in the budget two years ago to pay for a racial-profiling analysis.

About $10,000 of that was already spent to hire experts from Le Moyne
College and Onondaga Community College to try to make sense of the
tens of thousands of forms that have already been collected.

Those experts last summer determined that the forms weren't capturing
the right kind of information.

Several changes have been made to the new forms to rectify that,
Horrace said. The new forms, for example, include a field where an
officer will note whether a person was stopped because of a dispatched
call or because of the officer's own judgement or suspicions.
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