NEW JERSEY ADMITS TO RACIAL PROFILING

TRENTON, N.J. - Nearly 100,000 pages of documents made public Monday 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 Monday 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 Monday.

``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,'' Attorney General John J. Farmer Jr. said.

In an April 1999 report, former Attorney General Peter Verniero admitted
minorities were targeted.

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.'