THE TRUTH ABOUT RACIAL PROFILING

The racial profiling scandal in New Jersey seemed to subside in 1999. The
Whitman administration admitted that some state police officers were
stopping and searching motorists based on race and accepted a police
monitoring procedure devised by the United States Justice Department. But
newly disclosed documents have revived the scandal. They show that the
police uncovered evidence of racial profiling by highway officers as early
as 1996 and deliberately hid the data from federal investigators.

The full extent of the deception is not yet clear. But the Justice
Department needs to investigate the matter vigorously to determine whether
the state police - or those to whom the agency reported - illegally
obstructed the federal investigation.

Minority motorists have long complained that state police officers along
the New Jersey Turnpike single them out for drug searches based on race and
ethnicity. These complaints were given credibility in 1996, when a
Gloucester County judge ruled that state troopers had used illegal
profiling along the southern end of the turnpike. The state police disputed
that finding at the time and continued to insist that its officers operated
without racial prejudice.

Records supplied to lawyers who were suing the police for discrimination
suggest otherwise. They show that the department's own internal audits
produced evidence of racial profiling as early as the fall of 1996.

The racial discrepancies in the data were so striking that the chief of
internal affairs recommended a formal monitoring program that would have
focused on officers who stopped disproportionate numbers of minority
drivers. But according to a report in yesterday's Times by David Barstow
and David Kocieniewski, senior officials rejected proposals aimed at ending
the practice and instead pursued a strategy of withholding information from
federal civil rights prosecutors. According to one document, the strategy
of withholding information was discussed at the time with Gov. Christine
Todd Whitman's attorney general, Peter G. Verniero, who has since been
appointed to the New Jersey Supreme Court.

The Times article was based on an analysis of 11,000 pages of newly
released documents - 40,000 pages are still to come. The record shows that
the state police distorted the facts and violated the public trust. What
the Justice Department needs to determine is whether the police also broke
the law.