CUSTOMS SAYS IT'S CHANGED

The U.S. Customs Service, stung by a congressional report showing African
American women returning from overseas trips were disproportionately
singled out for strip searches at airports, said yesterday that policy
changes put in place last year are taking hold.

Customs Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly released new statistical data showing
airport inspectors have improved their targeting of international travelers
suspected of smuggling cocaine and heroin in their clothes and in their bodies.

"Racial bias is not the policy of the Customs Service and will never be
tolerated," Kelly said at a news conference.

Customs officials said the number of intrusive searches has sharply
declined but that drug seizure rates are more or less similar among African
Americans, Hispanics and whites.

For example, Customs said it found contraband on 55 percent of travelers
selected for intrusive searches in the first six months of fiscal 2000, up
from 26 percent in the same period of fiscal 1999.

Intrusive searches include strip searches, X-rays, body cavity searches and
monitored bowel movements. Since last year, Kelly has required Customs
inspectors to obtain the approval of a supervisor or senior manager before
performing such searches or detaining a passenger for medical examination.

The General Accounting Office, in a study requested by Sen. Richard J.
Durbin (D-Ill.), analyzed searches in fiscal years 1997 and 1998 and found
African American women nearly twice as likely to be strip-searched on
suspicion of smuggling drugs as white men and women, and three times as
likely as African American men to be strip-searched.

The intrusive searches were not justified by a higher rate of discovery of
contraband among minority groups, GAO said.

But Customs data for the first six months of fiscal 2000 showed black women
now among the least likely to be searched. They were half as likely as
white males to be searched on suspicion of smuggling drugs and had
approximately the same likelihood of undergoing a search as white females,
the agency's figures showed.

More than half of all the travelers searched, regardless of race or gender,
were found to be carrying drugs, Customs said.

Growing numbers of smugglers swallow cocaine-filled balloons or insert
packages of heroin into their body cavities, officials said. Customs has
far-reaching authority, upheld by courts, to detain travelers and
administer searches if they suspect persons of smuggling.

Kelly, who took charge of Customs 19 months ago, said a shortage of
reliable historical data makes it difficult to determine why the agency
appeared to slip into discriminatory practices when selecting passengers
for searches. But he said inadequate training of inspectors, weak internal
policies and a lack of oversight by senior agency managers were factors.

"This whole process needed more management oversight than it was getting,"
Kelly said.