WHITMAN SHUNS HER PROFILING TASK

Good Of The State Demands An Apology

The time has come for Christie Whitman to acknowledge her culpability in
the issue of racial profiling. To this point, the governor's behavior has
been disheartening: She seeks credit for putting an end to the practice but
refuses to accept responsibility for allowing it to flourish for six years
of her term. This tactic is demeaning to the state's minority citizens and
to the state police. It also reeks of insincerity.

Whitman would have us believe she was unaware of the existence of racial
profiling until shortly before the state acknowledged it in 1999. This
would mean she was deaf to years of complaints from blacks; uncurious about
a 1996 judge's ruling that determined the state was engaged in racial
profiling; and not told by her attorney general that the U.S. Justice
Department had begun investigating police profiling in New Jersey. This
strains credibility.

In the end, however, even if Whitman is telling the truth, she is wrong. As
governor, she should have been aware of the problem. Ignorance is failure.

Do not doubt that a strong executive could have made a difference. When he
took office, Jim Florio remembers that several black ministers complained
about race-based stops. Within a couple of weeks, Florio had told his
attorney general the practice should be halted; his attorney general had
relayed the message to the superintendent of police, and the superintendent
had put forth a memorandum banning the practice. The number of drug arrests
fell, but so did complaints.

On Thursday, current Police Superintendent Carson Dunbar called a news
conference to lambaste the press for its continued coverage of profiling,
saying its criticisms were unfair to police. Dunbar's frustrations are
understandable, but they should be directed at his governor. By refusing to
take responsibility for profiling, Whitman leaves the impression that it
was, and is, a state-police problem. This is not true. Police were
following orders, both spoken and understood. Appearing with state police
in Camden on the now infamous night when she had her photo snapped patting
down a drug suspect -- an innocent man it turned out -- Whitman lent her
enthusiastic support to aggressive drug-interdiction tactics, even when
they resulted in the corraling of innocent folk. Many police nevertheless
acted with integrity and restraint. Others did their job as best they
understood it. The culpability is not theirs; it is Whitman's and her
administration's.

The refusal to take responsibility is doubly onerous because it reduces
profiling to a conflict between the police and the state's minority
citizens, an unwinnable and unnecessary war. This presumed conflict turns
profiling into a political issue, one that politicians are wary of
tackling. Because of this, legislation banning profiling has been held up
for more than a year. The truth is profiling is a social problem, and
politicians from both parties need to be working on it together.

Finally, the governor's actions and inactions are deeply insensitive to the
state's minority citizens. Many of them have been wronged and deserve an
apology. Instead, they are met by a head of state who continues to defend
the very people who should be called to task. Her most egregious support is
for Peter Verniero, who served as her attorney general at the height of the
profiling crisis and was appointed to the state Supreme Court largely
because he denied any knowledge of profiling.

Much of Verniero's testimony looks damning in the face of the recently
released pages that strongly suggest he was completely conversant with the
issue long before he acknowledged it publicly. And no one was assuaged by a
long-overdue but incomplete statement he issued Friday. Whitman, however,
continues to defend him. If she cared about the issue, she would insist
that Verniero explain himself fully.

Her behavior is demeaning and disgraceful.