STATE TROOPER'S ESP HAD A STRONG DOSE OF DWB

You've got to be impressed by the cognitive abilities of the drug
interdiction squad at the Virginia State Police. It's like they're
psychic.

They seem to be able to know in their bones when certain motorists are
transporting drugs.

Let's set the scene: A couple of years ago, Trooper C.S. Wade, a
narcotics cop veteran, had just finished a traffic stop on U.S. 13 in
Northampton County, along the Eastern Shore.

Wade, in uniform and walking outside his unmarked trooper's car,
noticed a green 1997 Mercury Mountaineer traveling south . He would
later testify in federal court that the SUV's driver, Ronald C.
Foreman, "was staring straight ahead as he approached, and as he went
by my location, both of his hands were on the steering wheel. He was
in a very tense posture and never looked over at any of us on the side
of the road as he went by."

One more thing: The trooper is white; the motorist is black.

You can probably see where this is headed, and it's not the Chesapeake
Bay Bridge-Tunnel.

Call this a classic case of police targeting a motorist who was "DWB"
- - "Driving While Black (or Brown)." In this instance, the police went
on a fishing expedition and successfully hooked a kilo of cocaine and
a suspect.

Am I glad the illegal drugs didn't reach the streets of South Hampton
Roads? For sure. Am I angry police didn't mind taking a chance on
detaining Foreman, a Norfolk native, primarily because he's African
American? You betcha. As a federal public defender said, "A late-model
car driven by a black male was the real reason the man was stopped."

State police officials insist they do not profile by race or gender.
"During interdictions, we look for characteristics not common to the
average traveling public," says Lt. Kimberly S. Lettner, unit
commander of the State Police counterterrorism-interdiction unit. She
told me Friday that her troopers don't stop motorists unless there's a
violation or reasonable suspicion.

But the fact is we rarely hear about those cases where
African-American or Latino motorists are kicked loose after being
stopped on a cop's hunch. Police say Route 13 is a known drug pipeline
to New York City, but it's also a key route to states north for
law-abiding citizens.

If I'm driving on it, do I have to rubberneck and place only one hand
on the wheel when I see the police, just to make sure I won't be
pulled over?

This is no idle rant. Last year I wrote about a case in which the
state paid out $30,000 in a DWB-related lawsuit. An African-American
man said he was illegally detained and repeatedly searched by a white
state trooper on Interstate 95, even though the motorist wasn't guilty
of anything.

Col. W. Gerald Massengill, who was superintendent of the State Police
at the time, said troopers didn't record the race of individuals
stopped but not issued tickets. That should change. You can't really
know whether racial profiling is a serious problem unless you keep
objective data on the police stops.

In the June 2002 incident on the Eastern Shore, Trooper Wade got back
into his police car and pulled over Foreman. The trooper had clocked
him going 64 mph in a 55 mph zone (over the limit, but not unusual on
state highways). He also noticed the SUV driver had air fresheners
dangling from his rear-view mirror, a potential sight
obstruction.

Foreman got out of his car and entered the trooper's car. After a
series of questions by Wade, and after checking his license and
registration, Foreman was free to go. It's then that Wade asked to
search his vehicle; Foreman refused, but a drug-sniffing dog was by
now at the scene, and it became agitated while walking around the
outside of the SUV, suggesting narcotics were inside. A brick of
cocaine was recovered.

Foreman's case bounced around the federal courts.

U.S. District Judge Rebecca B. Smith first suppressed the evidence,
citing an improper search; a three-judge panel on the 4th Circuit
Court of Appeals reversed her ruling. Foreman, with 35 convictions,
recently pleaded guilty to the drug charges in the case and was
sentenced to more than six years in prison. He's obviously no saint.

What's bothersome, though, is the rationale for stopping Foreman in
the first place. Roger Gregory, an African-American judge on the 4th
Circuit, said in his dissent that police, in other cases, cite making
eye contact with an individual as a reason for stopping them. So which
way is it?

The trooper's fishing trip was successful with Foreman. We just don't
know how many times police have to release their catch - all the while
trampling on our constitutional rights.

Roger Chesley is associate editor of The Pilot's editorial pages.