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