AN INSIDE STORY OF RACIAL BIAS AND DENIAL, NEW JERSEY FILES REVEAL DRAMA
BEHIND PROFILING

The 91,000 pages of state documents released last week about racial
profiling by the New Jersey State Police offer a rare look at one of the
most contentious battlefields in the nation's war on drugs.

Taken as a whole, the reams of memos, internal investigations, complaint
letters and confidential reports show how the institutions of state
government denied accusations of selective enforcement for nearly a decade
before grudgingly admitting it and making changes.

But the words written by the thousands of people involved - troopers,
civilians, attorneys general and state officials - also tell an intensely
emotional story: one of gung-ho troopers who saw themselves as unappreciated
as they risked their lives to protect New Jersey's minority members from
drug violence, and who sought promotions based on high-visibility drug
arrests; the anger and defensiveness of police commanders who believed their
tactics were unjustly branded as racist; the outrage of minority troopers
ordered to view their own neighbors as drug suspects; the bewilderment of
black and Hispanic drivers who could not understand why they were detained
by the police simply because of the color of their skin.

The story begins in the mid-1980's, when the federal Drug Enforcement
Administration responded to the street violence of the crack epidemic by
enlisting local police forces to catch smugglers who were importing drugs
from Latin America, often to Florida, and moving them to major American
cities by car.

By 1989, the New Jersey State Police had become such a successful part of
"Operation Pipeline" that D.E.A. officials hailed the troopers as exemplary
models for most other states.

But on New Jersey roadways, black and Hispanic drivers were subjected to
such frequent, unjustified traffic stops and searches that they complained
of a new, unwritten violation in the state's traffic code: "driving while
black." In state police barracks, some black and Hispanic troopers bitterly
acknowledged that even though the state officially prohibited racial
profiling, senior troopers trained them to single out drivers on the basis
of their ethnicity or race.

The documents show that a few state law enforcement officials were troubled
by evidence that minority drivers were being stopped and searched
disproportionately.

Those concerns grew in 1996, when a state judge in Gloucester County ruled
that troopers had engaged in "de facto racial profiling." But high-level
officials of the state police and the attorney general's office defended
their drug-interdiction strategy, even as they concealed their own
statistical analyses showing that minority drivers were being singled out.
Privately, state police officials argued that it was only fitting that black
and Hispanic drivers should face more scrutiny than whites because New
Jersey's drug trade problem was primarily a minority issue.

On April 22, 1998, troopers shot and wounded three unarmed black and
Hispanic men during a traffic stop on the turnpike, propelling the
controversy to the center of the state's political stage. State officials,
including Gov. Christie Whitman, at first clung to their insistence that
there was no pattern of profiling. But under unrelenting pressure from civil
rights leaders and the federal Justice Department's Civil Rights Division,
the Whitman administration ultimately acknowledged racial profiling,
revamped its narcotics strategy and agreed to let a federal judge monitor
the force.

These are some of the documents released last week:

Soon after the administration of former Gov. Thomas H. Kean ordered the war
on drugs on the turnpike, lawyers in the state's Division of Criminal
Justice studied federal and state court rulings on the legality of the
so-called "drug courier profile." In a memo to superiors on July 25, 1988, a
deputy attorney general, Meredith A. Cote, wrote that the clear principle
that "emerges from pertinent case law is that the stop and/or seizure of an
individual by law enforcement officers solely on the basis of drug-courier
profile factors is unconstitutional. An officer must possess articulable,
particularized facts, in addition to the profile characteristics, in order
to justify such action."

But the memorandum did not rule out use of the profile.

"The fact that a drug courier profile may not be used as a tool for
selective prosecution does not, however, entirely preclude its use after a
police officer has effectuated a valid stop for a legitimate motor vehicle
violation. As indicated previously, profile characteristics may be used by
law enforcement officers in conjunction with other articulable,
particularized facts to justify subsequent" searches.

Some training documents for state troopers used in the late 1980's and early
1990's had a racial focus. One, titled "Occupant Identifiers for a Possible
Drug Courier," began by identifying these drivers and passengers as
suspicious: Colombian men, Hispanic men, Hispanic men and black men
together, and Hispanic men and women posing as couples. "Any combination of
sexes or races could be possible drug couriers," the document said. "Only a
few of the common ones were listed above."

The state police training bureau offered a course in the early 1990's called
Sociology for the Police Officer. One of the topics was "ethnic and racial
minorities." An outline had these sub-headings:

IV.Police Stereotypical View of Minorities

A. Wary of minority people.

B. Believe minorities are more likely to be involved in criminal activities

1. Chinese Americans more likely to be involved in crimes of gambling.

2. Italian Americans more likely to be involved in organized crime.

3. Black Americans are more likely to be involved of crimes of violence.

4. Spanish-speaking Americans are more likely to be involved in fights or
taunting officers.

C. Greater degree of hostility directed toward police.

V. Minority stereotypical views of police

A. Are much more critical of police action.

B. More willing to see racial slights in police actions.

C. Feel more subject to mistreatment, harassment and brutality.

D. Police are symbolic, stand for the power and authority of the majority,
visible signs of majority dominated.

E. Police perceived in the punishment business.

F. Police are a `blue minority.'

VI. Ethnic and Racial Cultures

C. Differing Cultures, attitudes and values.

1. Black Americans

a. Blacks value their families.

b. Blacks value religion.

c. Blacks value material goods as well.

1. Blacks who are not able to purchase their own home put money into cars.

a. Cars important - show individual's style and personality, just as home
would.

In September 1989, the state police intelligence bureau prepared a document,
apparently in response to a series on WWOR-TV that said troopers were
stopping motorists on the turnpike on the basis of race, that talked about
"Jamaican Posses" in New York City and Philadelphia using the turnpike as a
conduit to transport drugs. It also said that 76.3 percent of all drug and
weapons arrests on the turnpike in 1988 involved blacks. But the document
said that troopers were not taught to practice racial profiling and were not
doing it. It said instruction for troopers "does not include profiling or
targeting techniques, but rather behavior-symptom analysis, conversational
techniques, case law, and search and seizure procedure. Thus, the training
focuses on events after the motor vehicle stop."

On the high percentage of blacks arrested on the turnpike in 1988, the
report added: "The fact that more blacks are arrested than whites is not a
result of racial targeting but is due to: 1) nearly two-thirds of all I-95/
Turnpike corridor arrests are for drugs and weapon offenses, an area which
intelligence suggests is heavily comprised of American blacks, Jamaican
gangs, Colombian cartels, Cuban exiles and Dominican criminals."