At the time, officials said the study demonstrated the department's concerns and Mr. Dunne promised that it would reveal "any geographic or systemic patterns to the violence."

"I sense a systemic pattern of discrimination similar to what formerly existed in the bar," he said.

They were discovering and inventing systemic patterns, orientations and rangings that cannot be seen but only inferred.

Some experts say focusing on relatively rare racial killings rather than the broader and systemic patterns of discrimination in American life produces a distorted, misleading picture.

However, there is also evidence that courts cannot or choose not to see systemic patterns in police brutality.

It was only in the 1990s that serious efforts began to transcend the difficulties of dealing with systemic patterns of police misconduct.

Kroeber notes that systemic patterns can pass from culture to culture:

Mr. Dunne said the department would review about 15,000 cases, looking for "any geographic or systemic patterns to the violence."

The deal heads off a threatened civil rights lawsuit over what the Justice Department calls a systemic pattern of abusive conduct by officers.

EEOC also continued its emphasis on eliminating systemic patterns of discrimination in the workplace.