TROOPERS' UNION DEFENDS STOPS LINKED TO PROFILING

TRENTON, Nov. 29 - The president of the New Jersey troopers' union defended
today the aggressive drug-interdiction stops the state police started
making more than a decade ago - even if, he said, race was sometimes one
reason a trooper made a stop.

"We were never taught racial profiling, we were taught criminal profiling,"
said Ed Lennon, president of the State Troopers Fraternal Association. "And
to the extent race entered into it, it did."

For example, he said, "in the case of Jamaican posses, they were from
Jamaica and they happened to be black. That didn't mean we should stop
every black driver on the road, but if you encountered some that fit a
criminal profile, that could indicate they may be a posse and may be
transporting or dealing in marijuana."

He said that when the drug-interdiction efforts began about 10 years ago,
troopers received commendations from their superiors and glowing news
coverage for drug seizures they made on Interstate 95, just north of the
Delaware Bay Bridge and just south of where the interstate leads into the
New Jersey Turnpike.

Mr. Lennon's comments, coming two days after a massive release of documents
that brought new visibility and withering criticism of New Jersey's history
of racial profiling, elicited a mixed response. William Buckman, a defense
lawyer whose curiosity about the high number of blacks being arrested on
the turnpike in Gloucester County led to the first successful use of a
claim of racial profiling to suppress evidence found during a traffic stop,
said Mr. Lennon's remarks showed the state police were still defending
racial profiling. But he also said it reflected the way rank-and-file
troopers were following policies dictated from the top of the department.

"I agree with Mr. Lennon that they were given the green light and told to
do this from the hierarchy, from their training," Mr. Buckman said. "It is
still absolutely outrageous," Mr. Buckman went on, "but I absolutely agree
that they were being rewarded for it and that was the way for a trooper to
advance."

Mr. Lennon insisted today that race was never the only reason for a stop,
and he said he was describing the early days of the antidrug campaign, when
zero tolerance for drugs was the watchword from the attorney general's
office and newsworthy arrests brought letters of commendation from the
police superintendent.

But critics of the police say his description of police training and
practice at the time confirms what state officials have only lately
admitted - that racial profiling was widespread.

"That's why I've always said that the hardest part of this effort against
racial profiling is still in front of us," said the Rev. Reginald T.
Jackson, executive director of the Black Ministers Council of New Jersey.
"Despite the state's admission of discrimination, no one in leadership at
the state police has publicly admitted that what they did was wrong. The
culture of the place doesn't allow them to see it. The troopers are just
waiting to go back to business as usual."

Assemblyman LeRoy J. Jones Jr., a member of the New Jersey Legislative
Black and Latino Caucus, echoed that view. "I think those comments capture
the discriminatory process of the state police," Mr. Jones said, "and they
continue to show insensitivity toward the healing process that obviously
should occur."

Mr. Lennon said the aggressive traffic stops began at the southern end of
the New Jersey Turnpike and were picked up by troopers elsewhere when news
reports of major drug hauls on the turnpike spread.

"A lot of the troopers down there received trooper-of-the-year awards for
doing that job," Mr. Lennon said. "They got special assignments and
promotions, and when other troopers saw what they were doing, they said,
`We're going to go out and get those drugs off the turnpike.' "

Mr. Buckman was a public defender in Gloucester County who represented many
of the motorists who were subsequently arrested on the turnpike on drug
charges.

"I noticed that although the drug problem spanned all races and classes,
the only arrests we were seeing off the turnpike were African-Americans,"
Mr. Buckman, now in private practice in Moorestown, said in a recent
interview. "And talking anecdotally with the other defense attorney we put
our heads together and came up with a new legal strategy to challenge the
issue of racial profiling."

The success of the drug-interdiction efforts in Salem and Gloucester
Counties produced the first rumblings of what would become the profiling
scandal that now envelops New Jersey law enforcement.

These days, many state troopers are seething, Mr. Lennon said, at the
accusations that their aggressive drug interdictions were tainted by
racism. Many troopers loathe Gov. Christie Whitman for firing Carl
Williams, the former superintendent of state police, for saying what Mr.
Lennon repeated today: that the drug trade is often associated with ethnic
groups, including white motorcycle gangs who, Mr. Williams said last year,
were sometimes connected with the amphetamine business.

So, while Mr. Lennon said he was simply stating the obvious, critics of the
police complained that his comments reflected a failure by the police to
recognize the severity of racial profiling.

Mr. Jackson said he and other civil rights leaders were going to call on
state lawmakers to adopt laws that would make it a crime for the police to
engage in racial profiling. But despite the outcry over the issue, public
opinion polls have shown that troopers still enjoy deep support among many
New Jersey residents, and the agency remains so politically sacrosanct that
few legislators have been willing to speak out against it.

"If it was anything else but the state police, there would have been an
outcry," Mr. Jackson said. "But with the state police, the Legislature has
been dead silent."