National survey suggests racial disparity in police use of force.

An estimated 45 million U.S. residents--about one in five--have some form of face-to-face contact with police every year, according to a recent Justice Department survey. In about I percent of those cases, police threaten or actually use force during the encounter, and the preliminary numbers suggest that officers may be more likely to use force on minorities.

Of the survey's more than 6,000 respondents, 14 said officers threatened or used force against them. The 14 respondents represented about 500,000 people nationwide. The study did not determine whether the threat or use of force was justified, but a majority of respondents in those situations said their own actions might have provoked the police.

The November Justice Department report is an early step in a long-term research project mandated by Congress in 1994 to learn more about how and when police officers use force. The findings were based on a pilot survey of 6,421 people age 12 and older, a sample selected to represent the entire U.S. population.

Of 1,086 whites who had police contact, 7 reported the threat or use of force, as did 2 of 97 African Americans, 4 of 74 Hispanics, and 1 of 51 respondents who listed their race as "other."

The report noted that "the small number of respondents prevents a reliable comparison of police use of force experienced by black, white, and Hispanic respondents." It suggested that a larger study would provide a more accurate picture of the extent to which race plays a role in use-of-force cases.

John Williams, chair of ATLA's Civil Rights Section, agreed that follow-up research is necessary. But he said the early numbers indicated an "enormous" racial divide.

"As a preliminary indicator, [these findings] confirm the widespread belief that police use of force has a significant racial component," said Williams, who practices in New Haven, Connecticut. The findings "underline the desperate need in our society to address immediately the problem of racism in law enforcement."

The Police-Public Contact Survey, touted by the agency as the first to provide national estimates of these encounters, took a comprehensive look at citizen interaction with law enforcement in the 12-month period ending in mid-1996. Some findings:

* Twenty-three percent of men, 19 percent of women, 22 percent of whites, 16 percent of African Americans, and 15 percent of Hispanics had some sort of contact with police.

* Most often, the contact was initiated by residents who sought help from police or provided assistance to officers. Police initiated the contact in about a third of all cases.

* Only Hispanics and people younger than 20 reported that the police initiated the contact more often than they did.

* People over 60 were least likely to have police-initiated contact.

* The reason for the police-citizen contact most often cited was for a civilian to report a crime. Other common reasons included being issued a ticket, asking the police for help, being the victim of a crime, and being involved in a traffic accident.

* An estimated 1.2 million people were handcuffed during the survey period, representing 0.6 percent of the entire population age 12 and older.

* Men, minorities, and people under age 30 represented a relatively large percentage of those who were handcuffed, compared with their representation among people who had face-to-face contact with police officers.

Jan Chaiken, director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), called the survey a "pretest" that was administered to a small sample of household residents in the Justice Department's annual National Crime Victimization Survey. Chaiken said in the future the questions will be incorporated into the full crime survey of more than 100,000 people.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics published the results jointly with the National Institute of Justice. Single copies of the survey report, Police Use of Force, NCJ-165040, are available from the BJS Clearinghouse at [phone].