CUSTOMS TO CHANGE POLICY ON PASSENGER SEARCHES

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Dogged by investigations and lawsuits alleging
abusive searches, the Customs Service is revising its policies for
checking airline passengers for drugs.

Customs already has posted new signs and brochures at airports
explaining why body searches might be required and offering people
comment cards to use in the event of mistreatment. Now the agency is
revamping its handbook and internal policies on personal searches,
work that may be completed soon, law enforcement officials said
Tuesday. They spoke on condition of anonymity.

An independent panel created in April to review the policies and
procedures used by customs inspectors to search for drugs also is
expected to release its findings soon, the officials said.

They would not discuss any specific changes under consideration.

Customs officers use searches to try to catch smugglers who hide
cocaine or heroin inside their clothes or swallow packets of drugs.
The searches usually begin with a pat-down and, with reasonable
suspicion, can proceed to a strip search, X-ray or monitored bowel
movement.

Just last week, the Customs Service announced that six major airports
will be getting new high-tech scanning machines that will let
inspectors see whether a passenger may be concealing illegal drugs.
Inspectors could use the machines rather than performing the other
kinds of searches.

The agency is facing numerous lawsuits over body searches, including
suits, first reported by The Associated Press last December, alleging
that people were singled out because of their race and gender.

Only 50,892 of the 71.5 million international air travelers who passed
through customs in 1998 were subjected to some level of body search,
most of them simple pat-downs, customs officials have said.

Among those whose race was recorded, almost as many blacks and
Hispanics as whites were subjected to the more serious strip or body
cavity searches or sent to hospitals for X-rays in 1998, customs has
said. A year earlier, 50 percent more blacks and Hispanics were
subjected to those searches than whites.

For those subjected to such searches or X-rays, drugs were found on 30
percent of blacks, compared with 31 percent the year before; 27
percent of Hispanics, down from 33 percent; and 19 percent of whites,
down from 26 percent in 1997, customs has said.

In June, President Clinton ordered federal law enforcement officers,
including customs, to document the race and gender of those they
arrest or detain.