Attorney General John Ashcroft's marching orders on how to deal with Cincinnati's police department came in the summer of 2000, long before he had any idea he would become the nation's chief law enforcement officer.

        George W. Bush, then the Republican presidential nominee, campaigned across the country saying that while his administration would investigate allegations of police violating civil rights of citizens, it would not become “the internal affairs bureau for police departments.”

        The less confrontational, more conciliatory approach that Mr. Ashcroft's Justice Department has adopted will produce its first tangible results today.

        The attorney general is in Cincinnati this morning to sign a landmark agreement with the city. It follows a nearly year-long Justice Department investigation of police practices.

        It will mean that the city of Cincinnati will reform its police department without the Justice Department taking the city to court, as happened in many other cities in the 1990s.

        Police departments nationwide were watching the Cincinnati case closely to see how the Department of Justice in the Bush administration would approach investigations of municipal police agencies.

        In the Clinton administration, under Attorney General Janet Reno, Justice had a long record of aggressively going after allegations of police violations of civil rights, taking city after city to court and threatening others.

        After last April's riots in Cincinnati, and with the city facing a federal lawsuit filed by the Cincinnati Black United Front and the ACLU alleging racial profiling by police, Mayor Charlie Luken invited the Justice Department to investigate the department's “patterns and practices.”

        But he and other city officials feared that Mr. Ashcroft might come down hard on the city, making it an example to make the case that the Bush administration took civil rights seriously.

        “I don't want somebody getting their politically correct card punched at our expense,” Mr. Luken said last May.

        But, after issuing a set of recommendations for changes in police practices last fall, Justice joined the negotiations to settle the racial profiling lawsuit, settling its case with Cincinnati without taking the city to court.

        “The attorney general wanted to take a cooperative approach,” a Justice Department official who asked not to be named said Thursday. “There's been an open discussion with the city about what we wanted. We didn't just drop provisions on the city at the end.”

        Mr. Luken said he has no complaints about how the Justice Department handled its Cincinnati investigation, “although there were times when it got very rough.”

        “It worked as well as we could have hoped,” Mr. Luken said.

        U.S. Rep. Steve Chabot said that he discussed how the Justice Department should approach the Cincinnati investigation last May, a few weeks after Mr. Luken had asked for it.

        “I asked that (the attorney general) take a different approach in Cincinnati as opposed to other cities, where the Justice Department had been very confrontational,” Mr. Chabot said.

        “He said he intended to be fair, open-minded and would not pre-judge the city,” Mr. Chabot said. “I think he has done that.”

        The personal involvement of Ralph F. Boyd Jr., Mr. Ashcroft's chief of the Justice Department civil rights division and an African-American, has been credited by many with helping resolve the Cincinnati case.

        Cincinnati went through a much smoother resolution than experienced by Pittsburgh, which ended its battle with the Clinton administration's Justice Department five years ago in a court settlement.

        Pittsburgh city and police officials there have described Ms. Reno's investigators as secretive and aggressive, making the process more contentious than it needed to be.

        “It was a very frustrating process for people here,” said Susan Mailee, the Pittsburgh city attorney who was liaison with the Justice Department lawyers.

        “It didn't seem to matter to them that some of the reforms they were demanding were already being implemented,” Ms. Mailee said.

       
       Dan Horn contributed to this report.

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