September 16, 1992

A debate that two decades ago divided New York City will be resurrected today as the City Council prepares to wrestle with a proposal from Mayor David N. Dinkins to create an independent, civilian-controlled agency to investigate police misconduct. When Mayor John V. Lindsay tried unsuccessfully in the 1960's to give civilians control over the review of accusations of police misconduct, the proposal set off an ugly political fight that pitted blacks against whites. This time, city officials and Council members say they are hoping that race will not become the center of the debate, but many fear the issue has the potential to polarize New York along racial lines.

IT'S 12:40 on a Friday afternoon, and Mizan Biswas and Mike Flores are loading carrots and beets and celery stalks into whirring silver machines like ammunition into cannons in the heat of battle. The line is lengthening at Healthy Chelsea, a market, cafe and juice bar just off Eighth Avenue at 248 West 23d Street in Manhattan, and the two men speed up the dance behind the counter, sending shocking green spurts of wheatgrass juice into tiny one-ounce cups and weighty pink Jumbo Combos into the hands of thirsty customers. While juice bars are not new -- Healthy Chelsea has been around for nine years -- their mass-market appeal is growing rapidly. While there are no figures available on the number of juice bars nationwide, many say business has shot up in the last year or so. And while home juicing machines are one of the best-selling housewares products in the country, sales of commercial juice machines are also on the rise.

State Attorney General Robert Abrams apparently edged out former Representative Geraldine A. Ferraro in a bitterly close race for the Democratic nomination for United States Senate from New York last night, setting the stage for a tough fight with the Republican incumbent, Alfonse M. D'Amato. The extreme closeness of the race raised the strong possibility of a recount or litigation. Absentee ballots and paper ballots will not be counted for another week, and state election officials said they could not estimate how many there would be.

Schools Chancellor Joseph A. Fernandez will let parents send their children to any school outside their district throughout New York City's five boroughs next year, giving the city one of the largest school-choice arrangements in the nation. The plan will let a Staten Island parent shift a child as far away as the north Bronx or a parent from a shabby quarter of Jackson Heights, Queens, send a child to a tidy suburban patch of Bayside, Queens. Parents who live in boroughs outside Manhattan but work there will be able to drop their children off at schools near their offices, as long as space is available.

THE Emilia-Romagna region is Italy's culinary heartland, a broad chunk of terrain that almost spans the peninsula north of Tuscany and south of the Alps. But despite its fame among Italians, the region is almost unknown elsewhere and is seldom visited by tourists who speed across the great fertile plain of the Po valley en route from Florence to Venice or Milan, unaware of the gastronomic treasures they are passing by. "I don't know another part of Italy that's so important gastronomically," said Lynne Rossetto Kasper, the author of "The Splendid Table," just published by William Morrow ($30). The book is an authoritative and imaginative celebration of the food of the little-known region of Emilia-Romagna.