RACIAL PROFILING PERSISTS IN N.J.

Reform: The State Must Collect Data On Turnpike Stops And Is
Retraining Police. But Some Troopers Deny That A Problem Exists.

TRENTON, N.J.--It was a drizzly night on the New Jersey Turnpike when
state troopers pulled over a van carrying four men--three blacks and
one Latino--headed to a basketball clinic.

What should have been an uneventful speeding stop turned violent when
the driver accidentally shifted the car into reverse. Troopers fired
11 shots into the van, wounding three passengers and further
inflaming the bitter conflict over racial profiling in New Jersey.

The 1998 shooting on one of the nation's busiest highways has led to
a $12.95-million settlement for the four men, prosecution of two
white troopers and a vow by New Jersey leaders to reduce the
disproportionate number of minorities pulled over by police. But
during recent hearings, law enforcement officials made a galling
admission: After years of wrestling with the issue the statistics are
virtually unchanged.

"It's clear we have not solved the problem," state Atty. Gen. John
Farmer said. While minorities average 30% of turnpike traffic, he
noted, they account for 78% of those stopped and searched by police.

Insisting that change will come, Farmer conceded the latest numbers
are "extremely troubling." New evidence, he said, suggests that when
police search drivers on the turnpike, they find drugs, weapons and
other contraband more commonly among white motorists.

'The White Man's Pass' Or 'The Black Dragon'.

The racial profiling controversy has ensnared some of New Jersey's
top leaders, embarrassing former Gov. Christie Whitman and sparking
an impeachment movement against Associate Supreme Court Justice Peter
G. Verniero.

It also has cast a bad light on the gritty, 148-mile New Jersey
Turnpike, a high-speed artery that roars past refineries and toxic
lagoons near New York City, hits suburban sprawl midway and ends amid
vast stretches of rural open space at the Delaware border.
Romanticized by Chuck Berry, Bruce Springsteen and Paul Simon, the
50-year-old highway has been dubbed "the white man's pass" by black
motorists and "the black dragon" by state troopers.

Federal agents call it one of the main routes for drug trafficking
between Florida and New York, and while few doubt the need to halt
turnpike smuggling, many residents challenge state troopers' methods
and results.

"This makes us look like we're part of the Deep South," said David
Rebovich, a political science professor at Rider University in
Lawrence Township, N.J. "And the irony is that many people here think
they're so very progressive. They all want to know why this problem
continues."

The answers are varied, reflecting the complex dialogue about race
and criminal justice that bedevils the country as a whole. New
Jersey, which has publicly grappled with the problem more than any
other state, has no shortage of solutions--and excuses.

Give us more time, says Farmer and other politicians, insisting that
profiling is a management problem. Yet many state troopers continue
to deny that a problem exists, saying they have never used race as
the sole basis for stopping a motorist. The essentially unchanged
statistics, they contend, speak for themselves.

"A lot of people don't want to accept this," said Ed Lennon,
president of the New Jersey State Troopers Fraternal Assn. "It just
may be that our troopers are arresting people for very sound reasons."

Others contend that the actions of state troopers have been tainted
by their alliance with the Drug Enforcement Administration's
"Operation Pipeline." Under the 1980s program, New Jersey and other
states enforced a zero tolerance crackdown on major highways. The DEA
drafted guidelines singling out minority drivers, noting that
Chinese, West African and Nigerian, Pakistani, Indian and Colombian
couriers were the largest "visible heroin trafficking groups." Agency
guidelines also noted that because "blacks value material goods,
blacks who are not able to purchase their own home put money into
cars."

It would be unrealistic to expect troopers to "unlearn" these lessons
overnight, said David Harris, a national expert on racial profiling
and a law professor at the University of Toledo in Ohio. "This
problem goes very deep into the past."

So deep, some say, that New Jersey must confront fundamental issues
in the American psyche before it can solve the profiling problem. The
practice reflects racial attitudes that are ingrained years before a
trooper takes his first spin on the turnpike, said Col. Carson
Dunbar, the state police superintendent.

Some critics grudgingly give the state credit. "At least New Jersey
is struggling with this," said Deborah Jacobs, executive director of
the state's American Civil Liberties Union. "In most other states,
the real conversation about profiling hasn't even begun."

For nearly a decade, however, New Jersey officials discounted growing
evidence that racial profiling was a problem. In a watershed 1995
case, a state court ruled that troopers had halted minority motorists
on the southern end of the turnpike solely because of their race. A
judge found that drug and weapon evidence was inadmissible in court
against 17 defendants who alleged they were unfairly targeted by
officers.

The state appealed but dramatically shifted course after the April
23, 1998, turnpike shooting of Leroy Jarmaine Grant, Danny Reyes,
Keshon Moore and Rayshawn Brown, all in their 20s and from New York
City. "The police and politicians knew they were in for a tough time
when they searched the van and found no guns or drugs," said Peter
Neufeld, a lawyer who, along with Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. and Barry
Scheck, represented the four men.

"These kids were headed to basketball tryouts in North Carolina. . .
. They all came from good homes and their parents were absolutely
furious."

Troopers John Hogan and James Kenna said they acted in self-defense.

The officers reported that they pulled the minivan over for speeding.
As they approached, the van lurched backward, knocking Hogan to the
ground, said Bob Galantucci, Hogan's attorney. Kenna, believing his
partner was in danger, fired into the vehicle, as did Hogan, the
lawyer said.

But a forensic investigation cast doubts on the troopers' accounts,
prosecutors said. Police investigators and witnesses said the van had
been moving slowly in reverse, was not a threat to either officer and
that it was unlikely Hogan had been knocked down as he claimed.

Kenna faces trial for attempted murder, and both troopers have been
charged with aggravated assault. A separate grand jury indictment
charged the two men with falsifying records of past turnpike
encounters to cover up that they had stopped a disproportionate
number of minorities. Their trial is set for Sept. 4.

Despite the high-profile prosecutions and promised police reforms,
the political fallout continues.

The racial-profiling controversy was considered a factor in Whitman's
surprise decision last year not to seek election to the U.S. Senate.
The former governor, who now heads the Environmental Protection
Agency, also was embarrassed by the release of a 1996 photo that
caught her smiling as she frisked an innocent black man during a drug
sweep in Camden. Months after the shooting, Verniero--who was
Whitman's attorney general and a nominee for a vacancy on the New
Jersey Supreme Court--joined his boss in denouncing racial profiling.

But he has come under attack in the state Legislature in recent
months, as many Democrats and Republicans allege that he tried to
cover up the extent of the problem during earlier testimony. Verniero
has denied the charges and appears to have won his battle to stave
off impeachment.

In 1999, New Jersey law enforcement officials dropped years of
opposition to a federal probe and agreed to a consent decree that
monitors their efforts to curb profiling. The reforms are a start,
critics say, but many point out that racial justice is in the eye of
the beholder--and that people view the turnpike with radically
different eyes.

History Of Associating Black Men With Drugs

Lennon, the head of the state troopers association, said he opposes
racial profiling. He recalled that, as a young officer in the early
1980s, "the arrests we made quite often happened to be black males
from down South. Not every time, but when [officers] came in with
large amounts of cocaine and heroin, it always seemed to be black men
traveling southbound out of the Lincoln Tunnel, down to the
Carolinas."

Men who looked like Grant, Moore, Brown and Reyes. Men who took the
same route down the turnpike. When he addressed a Senate panel,
Dunbar made that point by quoting the Talmud: "We do not see things
the way they are. We see things the way we are."