In "Born to rape?" by Margaret Wertheim, there was a minor statistical error in the figures about rape rates in the United States. While the 1992 study cited does not, in fact, suggest that the overall percentage of rape in America is as high as 20 percent, another study, not cited by the authors of "A Natural History of Rape," and a number of researchers interviewed for the article indicate that the rate of rape in the United States may be that high. The article has been corrected.

Brutal verdict
BY BRUCE SHAPIRO
(02/26/00)

Those cops weren't murderers, but I sure as hell don't want them on my street in New York City. They panicked, and cops shouldn't panic.

-- Dorothy Stade

I think that we are giving the cops too much slack even in your excellent article. I think that it went down like this:

Cop: "Put your hands up! Do you have any ID?

Victim: "Yes." (reaches down to his wallet to produce his ID.)

Cops: (bang bang bang bang for 41 shots)

-- Michael Kerry Jordan

I am at a complete loss as to the rationale of the jurors in the Diallo case. I truly believe that a righteous verdict would have been a conviction for manslaughter at a minimum. But at least one thing is clear: I have a better feeling for how white people must have felt when O.J. Simpson was acquitted.

-- Kevin Hale

Contrary to what Sharpton says, it is not "any" man who has a right to feel he is being protected by police rather than shot at. It is the man who does not appear to threaten. Those who appear to pose a deadly threat invite the consequences. This said, it is another question whether Diallo posed such a threat. A jury of 12, including four blacks, apparently thought he did. I myself do not know the answer, but then, I didn't hear or see the live evidence.

-- David Cortes

The beating goes on
BY JILL NELSON
(02/26/00)

Data gathered by the FBI reveals that blacks commit most of the violent crimes.If everyday I stepped out my front door, and a green dog with blue spots bit me, after a while, I become suspicious of green dogs with blue spots! So it goes with racial-profiling. It exists because there is a just reason for it.

-- Bruce Roberts

Anyone who has any street smarts at all knows that when the police are pointing guns at you and tell you to put your hands in plain sight you do not reach into a pocket. I do not condone the killing of Diallo at all -- it was clearly a tragedy -- but was it a criminal act? The jury did not think the prosecution made a good enough case for conviction. A jury made up of 12 people with Jill Nelson's mindset would not have had to leave the courtroom for deliberations.

-- John Curran

Let get this right. Four trained police officers could not recognize a wallet for what it was, a wallet. At close range they fired 41 times at a man missing him 22 times, they missed 55 percent of their shots. Who trained them? Where did the rest of the rounds go? Through the walls, into the street or did they just fall down? If anyone else did this they would be jailed for wanton endangerment of society.

-- Mark Harvey

The answer to this problem is to add as many black police as possible to the NYPD and then place them all in black neighborhoods where they can then enforce the law, but the black officers don't want to go to the bad neighborhoods any more than the white officers do.

-- J. Watson

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