What price order?

New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has built his political reputation upon the dramatic reduction in crime in that city during his administration. The shocking details that emerged during the trial of the four NYC police officers acquited last week by an Albany jury of all wrongdoing in the slaughter of Amadou Diallo reveal an obsessive quest for law and order that lost sight of civil rights.

Mr. Diallo was 22-year-old immigrant from Guinea who came to America to earn money for college. Hard-working, friendly, deeply religious and utterly law-abiding, he commited the two fatal errors the night of Feb. 4, 1999: he was standing on the steps of his apartment building while police were searching for a rape suspect; he, like the suspect, was black. When Mr. Diallo reached in his pocket for his wallet, which the four officers said they thought was a gun, he was smothered in a barrage of 41 bullets. Nineteen struck him — several, the evidence strongly suggested, after he had fallen.

The jury of eight whites and four blacks acquited the officers of all charges, from murder to reckless endangerment. The successful defense argument was that the police may have acted in error, but within the rules set down for them. If so, the need for a drastic revision of the rules is obvious.

Beyond that comes the question of the terrible price New York City has paid for its newfound law and order. The four officers were members of the two-year-old Street Crimes Unit, an elite, 400-member, predominently white, centralized, plainclothes squad with unprecedented and unconscionable powers. During its first two years in operation, SCU officers stopped, interrogated and frisked 40,000 people, mostly black and Latino men, who had commited no crime.

Since the Diallo shooting, some 50 minority officers have been added to the SCU. The officers are back in uniform and they are under the decentralized control of the local precinct commanders. In short, they are community police officers, walking the neighborhood streets, getting to know the residents, gaining their trust.

Throughout the country, including Maine, big cities and small towns have adopted community policing. It is the hard way to law and order, but it is the best way to fight crime while preserving the civil rights of all. It is tragic that New York City may be learning this lesson only at the cost of Amadou Diallo’s life.