Police officers involved in shootings will have to take a mandatory breath test to measure for alcohol in their bloodstream starting in September, Commissioner Raymond Kelly announced yesterday.

The new policy is one of 19 recommendations from a panel of NYPD chiefs and deputy commissioners studying undercover operations following the death of Sean Bell, an unarmed driver who was shot by police in the fall.

Mr. Kelly said he had accepted all of the panel’s recommendations.

The panel also proposed professional acting classes for undercover officers, psychological screenings for those seeking to go undercover, an accelerated promotion track for officers working undercover to become detectives, and dropping the requirement that police must have two years of experience before becoming an undercover officer.

The breath test proposal is likely to face opposition from the police unions, although the commissioner said he believed it would overcome any legal hurdles.

“You’re using deadly force,” Mr. Kelly said. “They looked at it and thought that it was the right thing to do.”

Bell’s widow, Nicole Paultre-Bell, was among the critics calling for mandatory alcohol testing for police.

As allowed under department guidelines, the detective accused of firing the first shot at Bell drank two beers during his shift working undercover at a strip club where the victim was holding his bachelor party.

The three detectives accused of killing Bell in a hail of 50 bullets weren’t given Breathalyzer tests because it wasn’t policy, although commanding officers found at the time that they were “fit for duty.”

Mr. Kelly said the panel had not studied the Bell case in producing its recommendations, adding that there was no evidence alcohol had played a role in the shooting.

Instead, he said the panel, which convened in December, used interviews with undercover officers and decades of experience working in the police department to produce the recommendations.

The Breathalyzer policy is to apply to all officers, on-duty and off, who cause injury or death with their firearms. Mr. Kelly said the information gathered from the tests would be used “in evaluating” police-involved shootings, and could factor into disciplinary decisions. It could also be obtainable in lawsuits.

There were about 40 such shootings last year, the commissioner said.

Mr. Kelly said the department was deciding whether a scale such as that used to test alcohol level of drivers would be used for police officers.

The commissioner said he expected the 19 proposals to be implemented in stages after he sends the recommendations to bureau commanders and other department chiefs this month for input.

“Certain aspects of these recommendations are happening” already, he said.

The department is also waiting on results from a study by an independent think tank, the RAND Corp., commissioned by the NYPD following the Bell shooting. The study is expected to include recommendations for firearms training for all police, not just undercover officers.

Earlier in the day at a City Council hearing, one of the members of the panel, Chief of Community Affairs Douglas Zeigler, announced another new police initiative that follows the Bell shooting.

Starting this summer, new police graduates will end their training with field trips into the city’s minority communities. The training will include visits to stores, religious institutions, and other community gathering places.

Police critics who called for new policies in response to the Bell shooting were only slightly mollified at the new initiatives announced yesterday.

The Reverend Al Sharpton, who led protests following the shooting, called the recommendations “a small step towards justice as a result of the Sean Bell tragedy,” while Council Member Charles Barron renewed his calls for stricter punishments for officers that kill or injure someone.

Mr. Kelly has already taken steps in recent years to increase punishment for alcohol-related offenses by police officers. He introduced a policy in 2002 to fire any officer who injures someone while driving drunk, and in 2005 implemented surprise Breathalyzer tests for officers known to have alcohol problems.

A professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Maki Haberfeld, praised the new alcohol test, as long as the two-beer limit was kept to protect an undercover officer’s disguise.

“There has to be some provision that an officer who works in that capacity is entitled to have a couple of drinks,” she said. “They’re not going to go into a club and order a Coke with lemon.”