MINORITY COPS SAY COKE YUPPIES GET 'RACIAL' LENIENCY

Letting white, yuppie cocaine customers walk while jailing black and
Hispanic crack and marijuana buyers is "racial profiling at its
highest," a group of black police officers said yesterday.

The group, 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement, called on Attorney General
Janet Reno and her likely successor, John Ashcroft, to investigate
what it called a "racially charged double standard" within the office
of U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White.

The Post reported last week that hundreds of upscale coke clients -
including doctors, lawyers and professors - avoided federal
prosecution, despite being caught in a Drug Enforcement Administration
sting more than a year ago in which several dealers were busted.

White's office declined to prosecute the buyers, contemplating stern
letters of reprimand to the offenders instead.

"This flies in the face of many arrests we've made of
African-Americans and Hispanics," said Eric Adams, a New York cop who
is co-founder of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement. "We have a policy
where we arrest someone for carrying vials of crack."

Adams said blacks and Hispanics are routinely - and appropriately -
arrested for possessing crack pipes, crack vials and other
paraphernalia.

If white customers - or anyone - is slapped on the wrist for buying
cocaine, a double standard exists, Adams said.

White's spokesman did not return calls for comment.

Last year's sting broke up what was described as a massive
home-delivery operation. DEA agents spent a year observing a bogus
livery-cab service run out of a Queens apartment, which took phone
orders and made deliveries to such places as Wall Street banks and
fashionable Manhattan addresses.

When the dealers were arrested last year, White said the operation
made buying cocaine "as easy to order as a pizza."

Adams, who urged the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association to join his
protest, was joined by black narcotics officers who have arrested
people who have bought and sold drugs.

"It's unconscionable to leave the demand aspect of drug traffic
unfettered," said Terrance Wansley, a narcotics detective, in a news
conference outside White's office. "These people need to be held to a
higher standard."