Ripping ACLU over its report distracts from need for real reform

Police Commissioner William Evans said the department has since overhauled its procedures for stopping residents and has instituted new racial profiling and bias training.John Tlumacki/Globe Staff/File/Globe Staff

Looking at more than 200,000 police reports, and controlling for non-race factors such as crime and gangs, the report finds that Boston police unfairly singled out black communities and black people.

Indeed, I am one of the black men who has been unfairly stopped and frisked in Boston and elsewhere.

While I share Walker's optimism that current BPD leadership is committed to change, the alarming findings in the report call for real reform, not for shooting the messenger.

The writer is a professor at Harvard Law School and director of the Harvard Criminal Justice Institute.