RECORDS SHOW NEW JERSEY STATE TROOPERS TARGETED MINORITIES

Trenton, N.J. -- At least 8 of every 10 automobile searches carried out by
state troopers on the New Jersey Turnpike over most of the past decade were
conducted on vehicles with minority drivers, state documents reveal.

The figures, contained in 91,000 pages of internal state records distributed
yesterday by the state attorney general's office, show that a systematic
process of racial profiling became routine in state police operations,
Attorney General John Farmer said.

The documents are among those sought by lawyers representing minority
drivers who are suing the state, claiming racial discrimination.

Farmer said the practice of singling out African American and Latino drivers
evolved as part of the drug war of the mid-1980s, when the federal Drug
Enforcement Administration began asking local police forces to intercept
narcotics traffickers on major highways.

Farmer said 30 percent of the searches of cars turned up some kind of
contraband; 70 percent turned up nothing improper.

Although race-based tactics helped the New Jersey State Police arrest drug
smugglers, the methods inflicted a terrible price on the state's minority
residents, Farmer said, as troopers discriminated against thousands of
African American and Latino drivers who were stopped and searched solely
because of their skin color.

"The effect of that kind of ratio over 10 years is devastating," Farmer
said. "This may have been effective in law enforcement terms, but as social
policy, it was a disaster."

Farmer, who became attorney general 17 months ago, said he released the
documents as a way to "pay a debt to the past" and try to rebuild public
confidence in the force. But he also defended the actions of previous
attorneys general, saying the law regarding profiling is muddled and that
many of the drug interdiction policies that encouraged profiling were taught
by the DEA and the federal Department of Transportation.

Minority leaders praised Farmer for releasing the materials, but criticized
his conclusions about the tactics' effectiveness.

"It saddens and discourages me. Those comments reek of insensitivity, just
trying to find cover for obvious acts of disobedience," said state
Assemblyman LeRoy Jones.

"We find this spin to be an affront and insult to the minority community in
this state," said the Rev. Reginald Jackson, executive director of the Black
Ministers Council of New Jersey.

However, Farmer said there is conflicting case law about when it is
permissible for an officer to consider race in deciding to stop a driver. He
praised Gov. Christie Whitman for making New Jersey the first state to take
sweeping measures to stop racial profiling.

Whitman, who was attending a conference in California, issued a statement
praising Farmer for releasing the documents.

"While racial profiling did not begin in this state or under this
administration, history will show that the end of racial profiling in
America did indeed begin in New Jersey and under this administration," she
said.

But Jackson, the head of the ministers council, said Whitman ignored
complaints for years and acted only after three unarmed minority men were
shot by two troopers on the New Jersey Turnpike in April 1998. This month,
federal prosecutors agreed to pursue possible criminal charges against the
two troopers involved in the shooting.

In a February 1999 memo, Deputy Director Debra Stone of the Department of
Law and Public Safety wrote that after the turnpike shooting, troopers
brought in a drug-sniffing dog in hopes that it might find evidence to
justify the stop and the gunfire. No contraband was found.

Stone also wrote that discrimination is so deeply ingrained in state police
culture that experienced troopers act as "coaches" and teach profiling
tactics to rookies.

"Trooper after trooper has testified that coaches taught them how to profile
minorities," Stone wrote. "The coaches also teach this to minority
troopers."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.