RACIAL PROFILING TO BE ISSUE IN MD. DRUG TRIAL

A Montgomery County judge ruled yesterday that an analysis showing a
Montgomery police officer pulled over a disproportionately high number of
minority drivers is evidence that the officer targeted African Americans
and that he could be lying in a drug dealing case.

Montgomery Circuit Court Judge D. Warren Donohue said he did not
necessarily agree that the analysis by a Philadelphia statistician proves
the officer is racially biased, as a defense attorney argued on behalf of a
21-year-old black man whom the officer accused of dealing crack cocaine in
1998.

However, the judge said, jurors at the man's March 12 trial should be
allowed to consider the statistician's findings that about 70 percent of
Officer Charles Carafano's traffic stops from 1995 to 1999 involved
minority drivers. Minorities make up about 27 percent of Montgomery's
population.

Donohue said the statistician's conclusions are evidence that "this officer
targeted blacks. . . . Not that I agree his analysis is correct, but I
agree his analysis is evidence of that. Whether someone believes or accepts
that evidence is not for me to decide."

The judge said the analysis also "supports the inference that [Carafano]
may be lying" in accusing Joel Devers of drug dealing. Police said Devers
had a marked $20 bill that Carafano used to buy cocaine from a woman who
worked as Devers's go-between in Rockville's Lincoln Park neighborhood.
Whether a racial bias led Carafano to lie, the judge said, is also
something for a jury to decide.

The issue harks back to a recently quieted debate in Montgomery over
allegations that some police officers target African Americans and other
minorities in traffic stops. The county agreed in January 2000, after a
three-year civil rights review by the U.S. Justice Department, to improve
the way it handled citizen complaints and tracked the race of drivers in
traffic stops.

The review, prompted by complaints from the Montgomery chapter of the
NAACP, found that black drivers received an estimated 21 percent of the
traffic tickets issued by county police, while African Americans made up 12
percent of the population.

Carafano did not attend yesterday's court hearing. His supervisor, Capt.
Bryan McManus, said he advised Carafano not to comment on the allegations
while the court case is pending.

McManus said Carafano is "an extremely hardworking and productive police
officer" who still works in undercover drug enforcement. "In reviewing and
observing Officer Carafano's enforcement actions for the past year, I'm
certainly confident he's enforcing the law in a fair and unbiased manner,"
said McManus, director of the special investigations division.

Police spokesman Bill O'Toole said Chief Charles A. Moose was in a budget
meeting last night and was unavailable to comment. "He's reviewed the facts
of this case, and he hopes no one loses sight of the fact that this is
about a sale of narcotics," O'Toole said. "He supports Officer Carafano 100
percent and feels he's fully credible."

But Devers's attorney, assistant public defender Donald Salzman, argued
that racial bias caused Carafano to falsely accuse Devers of selling
cocaine, because Devers had cursed at Carafano when the officer tried to
buy drugs from him. Salzman said he also "has uncovered direct evidence"
that Carafano had previously "used racially offensive language," according
to court papers.

Salzman said Carafano's high rate of minority traffic stops could not be
explained by the prosecutors' argument that Carafano worked in
neighborhoods with relatively high concentrations of African American
residents.

Assistant State's Attorney Deborah Armstrong said an expert hired by the
prosecution found the statistician's conclusions to be flawed.

Armstrong said there was no way to know the racial makeup of the drivers in
the area where and when Carafano made the traffic stops.

The study, she said, is merely a defense tactic to try to shift a jury's
focus from the drug dealing charges to the officer's racial sensitivity.

In January 2000, a Montgomery jury found in a civil case that Carafano did
not assault a black man during an arrest in April 1998.