MINORITIES TARGETED IN N.J. COP DRUG STOPS, DATA SHOW

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) -- Nearly 100,000 pages of documents made public
yesterday show that New Jersey state troopers stopped overwhelmingly
disproportionate numbers of minorities in searches for drugs, the state's
attorney general says.

However, no evidence has been found that New Jersey worked to hide evidence
that troopers searched minority motorists based solely on the color of
their skin, he said.

The records were made available yesterday at a reading room in the state's
Hughes Justice Complex.

New Jersey is committed to ending racial profiling, Gov. Christie Whitman
said in a statement yesterday.

"While racial profiling did not begin in this state or under this
administration, history will show that the end of racial profiling in
America did indeed begin in New Jersey and under this administration,"
Whitman said.

The documents were expected to show that for more than a decade state
leaders knew about the large numbers of minorities being searched and tried
to balance that knowledge against legal drug-busting strategies -- some of
which received the blessing of the White House.

"Seven out of every 10 minority drivers (whose cars were searched) . . .
there was nothing there. From a social policy point of view, that's a
disaster," New Jersey Attorney General John J. Farmer Jr. told The
Associated Press on Sunday. "Did we do enough soon enough? The answer is no
or we wouldn't be here today."

In an April 1999 report, former Attorney General Peter Verniero admitted
minorities were targeted. That came a year after gunshots from two troopers
wounded three minority men during a traffic stop on the New Jersey Turnpike
and sparked a furor over racial profiling.

But according to the new documents, Verniero and his predecessors were
aware for more than 10 years that minority drivers on the turnpike were
being stopped and searched more than whites.

The U.S. Supreme Court has said police can use race as a factor in motor
vehicle stops, Farmer said. The Justice Department included race in
profiles of traffickers said to be using the turnpike as a drug pipeline,
he said.

"What you'll see is an agency and a department struggling with these
uncertainties," he said. "There was no overarching conspiracy to cover this
up. There was an attempt to understand it. There was an attempt to put it
into context.

"My hope is by getting all of this out, the people will understand, will
see the whole picture," he said.