TROOPER STOPS ARE STILL SKEWED

Black drivers on the New Jersey Turnpike are almost twice as likely to be
pulled over by state troopers as white, Hispanic or Asian motorists,
according to statistics released yesterday by the state attorney general.

The data showed that blacks accounted for 12.5 percent of Turnpike drivers
but 23 percent of those pulled over. For other racial groups, the
percentage of those pulled over was roughly equal to, or less than, their
overall percentage on the Turnpike.

The statistics were part of a report released by Attorney General John
Farmer Jr., the latest in a series of court-ordered measures to end racial
profiling. The report was based on the most recent State Police stop and
arrest records along the Turnpike as well as a first-of- its-kind census of
motorists who use the roadway.

The findings renewed charges that troopers continue to target minorities,
nearly two years after the state admitted racial profiling exists and began
sweeping reforms.

'Anyone who has believed that the reforms of the New Jersey State Police
and the issue of racial profiling will go away easily or quickly . . . must
now face the reality that the hard part is now before us," said the Rev.
Reginald Jackson, director of the New Jersey Black Ministers Council.

He added, "'In six months, if there is no difference, I think the
conclusion we will have to make is racial profiling has not been dented at
all."

Jackson said he would meet with Senate President Donald DiFrancesco
(R-Union) today to discuss reforms. DiFrancesco has asked a Senate
committee to review a series bills aimed at curbing racial profiling, and
two senators have proposed adding a civil-rights law to the criminal code.

Farmer yesterday disputed the notion that a black driver is more likely to
be pulled over on the Turnpike. He said results from the traffic survey
show the racial mix on the Turnpike varies widely based on the location,
time of day and day of the week.

"You can't draw conclusions like that from gross numbers. If you do, you
jeopardize the ability of law enforcement officers to do their jobs," he
said. "My nightmare is that some trooper gets so cowed by these allegations
that they don't do their jobs. When I wake up at 3 in the morning, that's
what I worry about."

The long-awaited study released yesterday was a requirement of a federal
consent decree, ordered to show whether the percentage of minorities
stopped and arrested was in line with the overall population of the Turnpike.

Farmer said it is impossible to determine an acceptable figure for the
percentage of minorities pulled over, arrested or searched by state troopers.

"We don't even know what's the proper number. Who knows? I can't tell you."
But, Farmer said, "There's nothing in any of this data that dispels the
need to continue the reform process."

The survey of 4,656 drivers was conducted over 21/2 weeks in May 2000. As
motorists pulled into tollbooths, a random sampling of them were asked to
answer a short questionnaire for $5. Almost 89 percent of them agreed to
provide their race, age and sex for the survey.

While the study ran into a few problems -- at one point, jack- hammering
near a tollbooth made it impossible to hear -- the survey found that 62.4
percent of the people who responded were white, 14.2 percent were Hispanic,
12.5 percent were black, 6.1 percent Asian and less than 1 percent Native
American.

Except for black motorists, those numbers nearly match the latest State
Police stop and arrest data that were also released yesterday, covering the
period from May through October 2000.

According to the State Police data, 59 percent of those pulled over were
white, 23 percent were black, 11 percent Hispanic, 6 percent Asian and
about 1 percent Native American.

"I don't think anyone really knows how to interpret the numbers given,"
said Edward Lennon, president of the State Troopers Fraternal Association.
"Anyone who believes troopers are stopping motorists by race is not
thinking realistically. Our troopers are simply enforcing the traffic laws
of the state."

The traffic survey, conducted for the Attorney General's Office by the
Public Services Research Institute of Calverton, Md., is consistent with
the results of an earlier study of the southern portion of the Turnpike by
a Temple University researcher.

In 1993, professor James Lamberth conducted a survey of the southernmost 26
miles of the Turnpike for defense attorneys charging racial profiling. He
found the percentage of black motorists using the southern end averaged
around 13.5 percent. Meanwhile, they accounted for 34.9 percent of the stops.

"If these stops were being done on a purely random basis without regard to
race, the probability of this kind of divergence between racial
distribution in the stop population and racial distribution in the highway
census is much less than one-in-one-billion," he wrote in his report on the
study.

That report convinced Superior Court Judge Robert E. Francis that State
Police were indeed engaging in racial profiling. He made his landmark
ruling in March 1996.

According to the new statistics, black motorists accounted for 15.1 percent
of the traffic on the southern end of the Turnpike, while 31.6 percent of
those stopped between May and October 2000 were black.

Lamberth said he would not comment on the State Police survey until he had
a chance to review the results and the methods.

But he said that although the percentages vary based on when and where on
the highway the study is done, the percentage of drivers using the road
"ought to come pretty close" to the total number of stops.

William Buckman, one of the attorneys behind the Lamberth study, said
that's no surprise.

"Blacks have always been a particular target on the Turnpike," he said.
"That simply is unacceptable that this agency has not been able to produce
race-neutral enforcement patterns."

In downplaying the survey's importance yesterday, Farmer focused on a new
computer system that will help the State Police crunch reams of data on
stops, arrests and searches -- and root out troopers who may still be
targeting minorities.

Also yesterday, Farmer released the second report from independent federal
monitors overseeing the reforms.

The monitors praised the new State Police training program as "state of the
art for ethics and integrity training." They also lauded the department's
computerized data-collection system for providing "accurate and timely data."

Among the negatives in the report: They found the development of a
computerized performance tracking system taking longer than expected, and
Internal Affairs investigations -- while fair and impartial -- taking too long.

Farmer also announced that the Internal Affairs Bureau dealt with 369
complaints in the first 10 months of 2000, compared with 358 in all of
1999. With the backlog of old cases dwindling, the wait to hear a case
should drop.

Overall, the latest set of data on Turnpike patrols showed little change.
About 41 percent of motorists stopped between May 1 and Oct. 31, 2000, were
minorities, up from 38 percent between January and April 2000.

The percentage of minorities arrested on the Turnpike continued to drop,
reaching 59 percent from May through October. That's down from the high of
79 percent reached from April 1997 through March 1998. In the latest data,
blacks accounted for 38 percent of the arrests.

Staff writer Barry Carter contributed to this report.