POLICE USE OF YEARBOOKS SPARKS PARENTAL CONCERN : WORD IS OUT.

Byline: Angie Cannon Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire

A high school yearbook is thought of as a treasured memento - with smiling photos of the glee club, football team and cutest couple.

But increasingly, police officers are using them to help solve crimes.

``A student publication isn't designed to be a rat sheet,'' fretted Linda Puntney, who is head of a national group of yearbook advisers and sold yearbooks to cops - for higher prices than students - in Independence, Mo. ``This makes everyone feel a little uncomfortable.''

In many precincts around the country, detectives routinely gather yearbooks to show to victims and witnesses when a student might be involved in a crime. Parents, yearbook advisers and civil libertarians say the practice violates students' privacy and raises the possibility the kids could be misidentified.

``They get it every year,'' said Anne Whitt, the yearbook adviser at the 4,000-student Dr. Phillips High School in Orlando, Fla., who reluctantly sells yearbooks to police officers. ``It is something that bothers me.''

The policy is causing an uproar in New York, where the police department ordered every detective squad to collect yearbooks from high schools and junior high schools to help in future investigations.

Police officials say the practice has been pursued discreetly for years. This year, word got out. Parents, civil libertarians and the schools chancellor were outraged, charging the police with creating a ``high school mug shot registry.''

``It lumps in all the innocent kids, and they are subject to being a suspect,'' said Norman Siegel, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, who is planning a protest rally on Sunday.

New York's schools chancellor says schools will consider individual police requests, but won't routinely hand over the yearbooks. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, a former prosecutor, finds no violation of privacy rights in the police request, but says he sees valid concerns on both sides. He has urged the chancellor and police commissioner to resolve the matter.

Larger trend?

To some, police use of yearbooks is part of a larger trend: American society increasingly views all teen-agers as potential felons.

``Clearly, there is a problem with youth crime,'' said John Crew, who oversees the Police Practices Project with the American Civil Liberties Union's Northern California office. ``But there has been a demonization of youth and especially young people of color. Just because there are some young people committing crimes, it doesn't outweigh the reality that 99 percent of young people are totally law-abiding.''

Crew said it's fairly standard for police officers to use photographs of people already booked for crimes. ``It is another thing,'' he said, ``to add to the collection of mug shots basically anyone who has gone to a high school and has had their picture published in a yearbook. It adds to this feeling that all young people are potential suspects by virtue of their age.''

Delfina Cruz, a South Bronx mother of four girls who plan careers as doctors, a nurse and naval officer, agrees. She worries it would ruin her daughters' futures if they were mistakenly identified through the yearbook.

``I'm very upset that something cherished by me would go into a police station,'' said Cruz. ``I have four girls who have survived the South Bronx, and this is something that could destroy their lives in a minute.''

Sheryl Douglas said her son's private Muslim school in Queens, N.Y., voted recently to scrap the yearbook this year because of the police yearbook file.

``They are concerned that they are being targeted unfairly by this,'' Douglas said. ``It is a major concern, especially in poor, minority communities. So many of our young people want to look alike that they dress alike, and it's easy to mistake them.''

`Common practice'

It's unclear exactly how many cities collect the yearbooks. Puntney, executive director of the Journalism Education Association, called it ``a very common practice,'' one that police have been doing for a long time.

Police departments in Detroit, Chicago and Atlanta say they don't seek out yearbooks, although a spokesman for the Atlanta police department exclaimed, ``What a great idea!'' when a reporter inquired.

Mark Goodman, executive director of the Student Press Law Center, which advocates for First Amendment rights for student journalists, said informal conversations with high school yearbook directors led him to conclude ``this is a very common practice, done in many places, especially in urban areas where there are special crime concerns.''

Baltimore police officer Ainsley Starghill said it's not department policy to collect yearbooks, but ``we have discovered it is a good investigative tool.''

Whitt said officers have asked her to give them the yearbooks, but, she said, ``I don't give anybody a book.'' So, the cops buy the books.

She said she can't refuse to sell to them, because the school sells yearbooks to others, such as real-estate agents.

``We build it as a memory book for the kids,'' she said, ``but other people use it for their own advantage.''