Police Brutality Must End.

• Position: Police brutality can be found in many parts of the country, but it is especially prevalent in New York City and in Los Angeles, California

Police brutality is a fact of American life. In major cities across the country, officers are abusing their authority in the most flagrant ways.

New York City and Los Angeles are the epicenters of this crisis.

When the New York City officers who shot and killed Amadou Diallo were acquitted in late February, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani responded to the verdict with the words, "Probably until the day I die, I will always give police officers the benefit of the doubt."

But what about giving other people the same benefit?

Diallo, an African immigrant, was unarmed, but the police said they acted in self-defense when they unloaded forty-one shots at him. Two days after the verdict, Malcolm Ferguson, also unarmed, was killed while struggling with a police officer in the same Bronx neighborhood where Diallo was shot.

Throughout his time as mayor, Giuliani has shown his disdain for civil rights and his eagerness to impose law and order at all costs. When Giuliani took office in 1994, he instituted his "zero tolerance" policy, which led to a huge increase in arrests for such crimes as playing music too loudly, biking on the sidewalk, and public drinking. Some officers got the message that it was OK to rough people up--especially people of color.

"Many of the people allegedly kicked or beaten by police were not criminal suspects but people who had simply questioned police authority or had minor disagreements with officers," Amnesty International said in a 1996 report "Police Brutality and Excessive Force in the New York City Police Department." "Nearly all the victims in the cases of deaths in custody and police shootings reviewed by Amnesty International were from racial minorities--particularly African Americans, Latinos, and Asians."

Diallo's murder and the grotesque abuse of Haitian immigrant Abner Louima in 1997 are only the most notorious examples of the brutality behind the N.Y.P.D. badge. Other incidents have occurred with alarming regularity.

In Los Angeles, infamous for the Rodney King case, a new, smoldering scandal has singed an elite anti-gang unit and threatens to consume the entire police department. The L.A.P.D. had a unit called Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums, or C.R.A.S.H. Formed in the late 1970s, it patrolled the Ramparts section of Los Angeles, a low-income area with a large immigrant population, and a home to gangs.

Ramparts officer Rafael Perez--who was accused of stealing eight pounds of cocaine in police...