DOCUMENTS SHOW WIDESPREAD RACIAL PROFILING

What has been common knowledge to many black New Jersey residents for years
is now detailed and confirmed in thousands of pages of newly released state
documents. They reveal that racial profiling by state troopers was
widespread, even rampant in some areas in the last decade. There have been
few efforts to stop it. More often, state officials denied it instead of
working to end the discriminatory and often humiliating policy.

The original strategy of searching the cars of black and Hispanic drivers
may well have been grounded in federal anti-drug recommendations, as state
law enforcement officials now contend. But New Jersey allowed the practice
to spiral out of control and to persist far after it had been rightly
denounced as flawed and racist -- to the point that the state was defending
troopers in cases where it knew them to be guilty of racial profiling.

The federal policy of including race as a factor in trying to make drug
arrests is questionable at best because it reinforces stereotypes. In New
Jersey, the practice was allowed to mushroom into all kinds of
discrimination and abuse of minority drivers -- to the point where cars were
searched based largely on someone's ethnic background or the color of his or
her skin. Roughly 80 percent of all vehicle searches on the turnpike
involved black and Hispanic drivers.

Many believe the policy culminated in the shooting of three unarmed minority
men on the turnpike two years ago. As the documents reveal, minority drivers
said they were tailed and stopped, even ticketed unfairly as a result of a
variety of ridiculous reasons -- because they were wearing a lot of jewelry
or driving expensive cars or, they believe, simply because they were black
or Hispanic.

Troopers may indeed have been getting mixed messages about race. =46ederal
drug enforcement information in past years did identify ethnic and racial
characteristics of suspects in the drug trade. But complaints by minority
drivers included in the documents cite allegations of disrespect, threats,
and outright racism by state troopers -- inexcusable actions that had
nothing to do with the war on drugs.

One minority state trooper complained in a confidential memo that he was
stopped 40 times by other troopers while driving off-duty. That is
outrageous. He said in the memo he was speaking up because he hoped that
"someday all people will be treated equally by the New Jersey State Police."

The documents' other, equally embarrassing revelation is the indifference of
top officials within the state police and in state government for much of
the past decade. They failed to aggressively attack the problem or even
candidly acknowledge its existence -- even in the face of mounting evidence.
Despite a few all-too-rare attempts to address the problem, the state fought
allegations of racial profiling in court and failed to conduct an in-depth
investigation of its own, until forced to by events.

Along with revamping the state police from top to bottom, releasing the
documents is a major step toward ending the practice once and for all, as
well as owning up to all its harmful consequences. Those consequences may
include throwing out convictions that were based on illegal state trooper
actions.

The consequences also include the anger and humiliation experienced by all
those minority drivers who were stopped for no reason, other than to harass
them and discriminate against them. If they lack confidence in law
enforcement as a result, can you blame them?

The ripple effects of releasing the documents will be felt in New Jersey --
and in other states with racial profiling problems -- for years to come.