THE ISSUE OF RACE is a constant theme in discussions of police brutality. Many concerned citizens charge that police brutality is far more likely to occur against black people than any other group. When MTV asked rapper Ice Cube to comment on the Rodney King beating, Cube replied, "It's been happening to us for years. It's just we didn't have a camcorder every time it happened."

The late novelist and essayist James Baldwin once said it is hard to find a black American "from the most circumspect church member to the most shiftless adolescent, who does not have a long tale to tell of police incompetence, injustice, or brutality."

One of the problems that arises in most discussions of the relationship between police brutality and race is the lack of hard data. Few comprehensive studies have been done, and few government agencies...