The New York Times today reports that a federal probe has determined that an elite undercover unit of the police department engaged in racial profiling while conducting an aggressive campaign of street searches. The inquiry began just weeks after the 1999 shooting death of Amadou Diallo, the unarmed African immigrant killed by four members of the police department’s street crime unit. The U.S. attorney’s office is meeting with the mayor’s office to try to negotiate changes that would avert a lawsuit. If talks fail, the Justice Department could go to court and ask a judge to order broad changes in the operations of the unit and possibly oversight by a federal monitor.