NEW JERSEY FACES MOUNTING LAWSUITS OVER RACIAL PROFILING

TRENTON, N.J. - After admitting the state's war on drugs unfairly
victimized minority drivers, New Jersey's attorney general may drop
drug charges against hundreds of motorists who claim they were pulled
over because of their race.

The state also could be forced to settle dozens of lawsuits filed by
black and Hispanic state troopers who allege they were forced to
practice racial profiling. Attorney General John J. Farmer Jr. said
his office would review each pending criminal case in which bias
allegedly tainted drug seizures. Criminal charges could be dropped,
he said.

Civil lawsuits also will be examined with an eye toward settlement.

``Where they are reasonable, we're going to settle these cases,''
Farmer said Monday. ``We'll certainly look at it a lot more closely
based on what we've discovered.''

On Monday, Farmer released nearly 100,000 pages of documents showing
that state troopers stopped overwhelmingly disproportionate numbers
of minorities in searches for drugs. New Jersey's top law enforcement
officials knew that since at least 1989 but didn't admit racial
profiling was widespread until an April 1999 report.

Attorneys for the motorists and the troopers returned to a state
reading room Tuesday to resume searching the documents.

``The constitutional violations are so egregious, and they've been
sitting on these documents for years,'' public defender Kevin Walker
said Tuesday.

Walker, who represents several defendants stopped on the New Jersey
Turnpike, said the state's only option is to dismiss the charges. His
office is considering a court motion to ask just that.

``If they're talking about settlement, if they're taking that
approach with the civil cases, it's certainly more important with the
criminal ones because of the constitutional violations,'' Walker said.

Attorneys predicted courts would be overwhelmed with pleas to
overturn drug convictions.

``I hope more people come forward. If the New Jersey justice system
has any moral strength and strength of character, it should be
willing to reopen cases where the convictions aren't sound,''
attorney William Buckman said.

Buckman led a legal challenge that ended in 1996 when a judge said
troopers on the turnpike targeted minorities more than whites.
Despite internal evidence to support that conclusion, the state
continued to appeal the ruling until 1999.

Included in the documents released Monday are many key reports state
officials denied existed, Buckman said. Some of them were evidence he
requested as early as 1990 for criminal trials.

Controversy over possible racial profiling - derided in the minority
community as DWB or ``driving while black'' - was heightened in 1998
when two troopers shot and wounded three minority men during a
traffic stop. In early 1999, Gov. Christie Whitman fired the State
Police superintendent after he said minorities were responsible for
most of the state's cocaine and marijuana traffic.

A state judge dismissed charges against the troopers involved in the
shooting, accusing prosecutors of misconduct.