ON WHITMAN FRISK OF DRUG SUSPECT

It's unbelievable that Governor Whitman, with all the problems in New
Jersey regarding racial profiling by the State Police, would be involved in
conducting pat downs of young blacks in Camden ("Whitman photo: an urban
symbol," Page A-1, July 13). Was this an arrest on her part? Did she read
the suspect his Miranda rights? Or was it a publicity photo op, like when
New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and former Sen. Al D'Amato dressed like the
Blues Brothers pretending they were narcs in Washington Heights?

Drug problems certainly exist in the affluent suburbs of northern New
Jersey. I would love to see the governor patting down the child of some
rich or connected white suburbanite the way she was so anxious to do in
Camden that day in 1996.

Anthony Van Zwaren, Ridgefield, July 21