By Donna De La Cruz
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, Oct. 5, 2000; 6:19 p.m. EDT

NEW YORK –– Mayor Rudolph Giuliani on Thursday angrily denied reported Justice Department findings that an elite unit of the New York Police Department engaged in racial profiling while conducting an aggressive campaign of street searches.

The inquiry by federal prosecutors began after the 1999 shooting death of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed African immigrant killed by four members of the Police Department's Street Crime Unit. The officers, acquitted earlier this year, had said Diallo matched the description of a rape suspect.

In a 30-minute tirade at City Hall on Thursday, Giuliani said if officers ignored the race of possible suspects, the city's crime rate would skyrocket, and he questioned the timing of the leak of the findings, coming one month before the November elections.

"There's obviously something going on in the Clinton administration to try to target police departments unfairly; but to target the NYPD is absurd," Giuliani said.

"There is no racial profiling in the New York City Police Department," the mayor said. "We will fight this case anywhere."

Attorney General Janet Reno declined to comment, and White House officials referred questions to Reno's office.

Under civil rights laws, the Justice Department could ask a judge to order broad changes in the operations of the NYPD's Street Crimes Unit and possible oversight by a federal monitor. Giuliani denied reports his staff had met with U.S attorneys to try to avert a lawsuit.

Federal prosecutors based their findings, reported by the New York Times and New York 1 television, on a statistical analysis of people searched by the unit's officers because they were suspected of committing crimes or carrying guns. New York 1, citing unidentified sources, said investigators found blacks and Latinos accounted for 85 percent of stop-and-frisk cases.

Herbert Haddad, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office, would say only that the investigation was continuing.

Giuliani said that although 89.2 percent of the suspects stopped and frisked are black or Hispanic, that number corresponds to the percentage of blacks and Hispanics identified by witnesses as criminal suspects.

The mayor did not say what percentage of stop-and-frisk stops are done from witness complaints compared to those done at the discretion of officers, and the NYPD did not release the figures.

The NYPD's stop-and-frisk policies have been under review by other agencies, as well. In June, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights concluded that the department improperly used racial profiling to stop and question people. In December, the state attorney general's office issued a report saying blacks and Hispanics are more likely than whites to be stopped and frisked by city officers.

Giuliani and Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik defended the unit's officers. The Street Crime Unit, comprised of undercover officers who patrol high-crime areas, has been credited for greatly reducing violent crime in the 1990s.

"It's not about racial profiling," Kerik said. "They're looking for bad guys."

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On the Net:

Justice Department: http://www.usdoj.gov/

NYPD: http://www.ci.nyc.ny.us/html/nypd/