Quotas

A top Baltimore police official yesterday disputed accusations made by a city councilman that officers are being forced to make more arrests as part of a department-wide arrest quota system. "The department does not operate under an arrest quota system," Deputy Commissioner Marcus Brown wrote in a letter to City Councilman Kenneth N. Harris Sr. "It operates under a crime reduction system." Harris sent a memo late last month to Brown, alleging that officers have complained to him that they "are being forced to increase arrests versus focusing on the quality of arrest."

The Howard County Police Department instituted rules during the past three months that some officers perceived as requiring them to make three traffic stops a shift and an average of 1 1/2 drunken-driving arrests each month -- a practice that experts say can lead to unwarranted arrests and ineffective policing. Howard Police Chief Wayne Livesay canceled the short-lived policy yesterday after learning about it from The Sun the day before. Up until then, Livesay said, he had not seen the written agreement between commanders and patrol supervisors dated Nov. 22 that included consequences, such as warnings and additional performance evaluations, for patrol officers who did not meet the drunken-driving arrest and traffic-stop "goals."

Criticism of Alito distorts his words Howard Dean's screed against Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. was misleading and disingenuous ("Alito fails the test," Opinion * Commentary, Jan. 9) Perhaps the most egregious accusation was that Judge Alito "attacked Americans' personal liberties by approving the inappropriate strip search of a 10-year-old child." This distorted statement exemplifies the willingness of Democrats to defame their opponents and distort the truth. The case Mr. Dean was referring to was Doe vs. Groody and involved the execution of a search warrant on a drug dealer's house.

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A City Council report released yesterday concluded that the Baltimore Police Department does not have arrest quotas and recommended that officials make it easier for people to expunge their records when they are arrested but never formally charged with a crime. A City Council subcommittee scrutinized these two topics after news reports highlighted complaints from the police union over the inner workings of a "performance enhancement program" for officers. "When we looked at what the enhancement program was doing, never in any way did it say, `You had to have quotas,'" said Councilman James B. Kraft, chairman of the Public Safety Committee, which wrote the report.

HONG KONG - The United States imposed quotas on imports of bras and certain expensive fabrics from China yesterday after American and Chinese trade negotiators failed to reach a deal in Beijing yesterday. The Commerce Department softened the blow by postponing until Oct. 1 any decision on whether to impose special limits on imports of Chinese sweaters, robes, wool trousers and knit fabrics. The department had set the deadline that expired Wednesday to set quotas on these categories, as well as bras and fabrics, to pressure China for a deal.

Another skirmish over Title IX, the federal anti-discrimination law that in part mandates equal opportunity for male and female athletes in schools, was settled yesterday by the U.S. Supreme Court. However, both sides in the legal wrangling agree the war over the nearly 33-year-old law is far from over. The high court refused to hear an appeal of a lower federal court's ruling that had turned away a lawsuit by the National Wrestling Coaches Association. The coaches group had argued that government regulations required colleges to make decisions regarding athletic programs - which, in some cases, meant cutting men's teams or forcing a reduction in rosters - based on quotas.

BEIJING - Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez warned yesterday that without solid enforcement of patents and trademark rights in China, trade tensions with the United States would increase. But a group of Chinese business students he met with here seemed to have only one thing on their minds: textile quotas. At the start of a three-day visit to Beijing, Gutierrez took a tough line on intellectual property protection. In a roundtable discussion with graduate business students at Qinghua University, he said the time for negotiations on China's lax enforcement of copyrights and patents had ended.

BRUSSELS - The European Union has given China until Tuesday to curb the flood of its textile exports to Europe or face a formal trade dispute, with the possible re-imposition of protectionist quotas on some goods as soon as June 15, the European Commission said yesterday. The European Union's trade commissioner, Peter Mandelson, and China's chief trade negotiator, Gao Hucheng, failed to defuse the dispute during a meeting in Brussels late Tuesday. Senior aides to the two parties continued talks yesterday, said Claude Viron-Riville, the trade spokeswoman at the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union.

Facing a surge of Chinese textile and apparel imports after global quotas were lifted Jan. 1, the Bush administration took the first step yesterday toward reimposing limits on purchases of certain clothing from that Asian nation. The move is expected to escalate trade tensions between the two nations and comes after intense pressure on the White House from politically powerful U.S. textile interests that have lost 17 mills and more than 7,000 jobs this year. The Commerce Department's Committee for the Implementation of Textile Agreements said yesterday that it was starting an investigation to determine whether imports of Chinese-made cotton shirts, cotton trousers and underwear were disrupting the U.S. market.