NEW JERSEY TROOPERS RALLY TO RESIST CHANGE

TRENTON, N.J. - As Gov. Christie Whitman has struggled to change the
racially discriminatory culture of the state police, she has run into
a surprisingly stubborn obstacle, the agency's steadfast support among
white New Jersey residents.

During the past 16 months, the image of the state police has been
tarnished by a barrage of embarrassing revelations that might have
doomed a less resilient agency to a furious public backlash and a
thorough house-cleaning.

There have been widely publicized allegations that troopers illegally
singled out black and Hispanic civilians, a questionable shooting in
which troopers wounded three unarmed minority men during a traffic
stop, and a Justice Department investigation into discriminatory
practices. The former superintendent, Col. Carl Williams, was fired by
Whitman in February for making racially insensitive comments.

Even the governor, who was initially skeptical of some complaints
against the troopers, conducted her own inquiry and eventually
concluded that some officers routinely discriminated against minority
civilians and co-workers.

Yet many New Jersey residents and elected officials still sing the
police force's praises with an almost patriotic fervor. Recent public
opinion polls have shown surprisingly little erosion in that support.
State legislators, who watch those polls closely and are mindful of
the troopers' political influence, have rallied to the troopers' defense.

The week before last, the state Senate's vocal opposition to
appointing any outsider to the superintendent's job scared off the
governor's top choice, Col. Andre Parker of the Illinois State Police,
a man who had revamped other troubled police forces. Parker, 43, would
have become the state's first black superintendent.

The state attorney general is scheduled to conduct a final round of
interviews with the remaining contenders, including some additional
outside candidates. But it would be politically perilous for the
governor to choose a superintendent committed to radical change or
ousting the entrenched commanders who for years tolerated
discrimination. The governor herself acknowledged that an outside
candidate would face a tough confirmation fight.

"It comes from a deep sense of respect for the men and women of the
state police," Whitman said recently. "And I think it's a bit of an
ill-founded feeling that if you go outside the state police you are
somehow repudiating the good men and women of that organization.
Because in no way is it a repudiation if that's what happens."

It is hardly unusual for communities to glorify their police forces.
Since the crack cocaine wars of the 1980s, there has been a surge in
public support across the country for tougher laws and larger, more
aggressive, law-enforcement agencies. Within New Jersey's borders,
however, the state police are showered with such torrents of adulation
that one might think they deserved credit for every law-enforcement
innovation since the billy club.

The governor, many legislators, even some people within the attorney
general's office who have publicly criticized the state police, almost
reflexively refer to the troopers as "the premier law-enforcement
agency in the nation." Rarely do they explain whether those accolades
are based on anything beyond civic pride.

Nationally, many law-enforcement experts consider the New Jersey State
Police a solid agency that, racial problems aside, does a commendable
job. But few experts use superlatives to describe its
performance.

Alfred Blumstein, a criminologist at Carnegie Mellon University, said
he had never heard it cited as an example of a cutting-edge, or
unusually effective, police force. "But innovation and productivity
aren't what make the public support their police force," he said. "The
public is more concerned about whether officers are nice to them."

Although only a limited number of the 2,700 officers have been
involved in racial profiling or questionable shootings, more than a
dozen current and former troopers have filed lawsuits charging that
racial slurs, selective enforcement of the law, biased hiring and
promotion practices and sexual harassment are tolerated, and often
encouraged, by supervisors.

The Whitman administration's inquiry also found that the police
force's secretive Internal Affairs Bureau was so unresponsive to
civilian complaints that some officers smugly refused to even take
reports of misconduct.

But public opinion polls taken this spring by The Star-Ledger of
Newark and the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University
found enduring public support for the state police. Among black
residents, who make up 14 percent of the state's population, 31
percent felt that the police were doing an admirable job, down from 56
percent a year earlier. Fully 84 percent of white residents said the
department was doing a good or excellent job, virtually unchanged from
the previous year.

Civil rights leaders say that dichotomy is not surprising, given the
state's racial divisions. The Rev. Reginald Jackson, director of the
Black Ministers' Council of New Jersey, said that some white residents
sincerely believe the stereotype that blacks are more likely to carry
illegal narcotics.

And in many rural towns, which are predominantly white, the state
police are the only law-enforcement agency, so residents have only
benign encounters with troopers who direct traffic and keep the peace.

"It's not affecting them personally, so they don't view it as a
problem for them," Jackson said. "And they don't understand how
demeaning it is to be considered a criminal simply because of the
color of your skin."

Some political analysts believe that the public allegiance to the
troopers is also an outgrowth of New Jersey's inferiority complex, the
sense that many state residents often feel overshadowed by New York
and unfairly maligned by the media. Gerald Pomper, a professor of
political science at Rutgers, said some New Jerseyans embrace their
civic institutions as a way of affirming their state identity.

"Even though New Jersey has overcome a lot of the unfair wisecracks in
the past 20 years, and started to develop a sense of state pride,
people here still resent attacks on state institutions," Pomper said.
"And they resent the idea that we might need an outsider to come in to
fix things, as if the state can't handle its own problems from within."

The public's eagerness to forgive the troopers and put the issue to
rest has limited the governor's options. The most telling aspect of
the legislature's resistance to Parker's nomination was its
spontaneity. Although the police union donates considerable sums of
money and campaign help to elected officials, legislators insist that
the outpouring of solidarity was not the product of lobbying.

"The state police don't have to lobby much," said one Democratic
legislator. "They usually get their way simply by asking."

That instinctive reaction to stand by the men in blue and gold leaves
the governor in an uncomfortable position. By vowing to correct the
department's discriminatory culture, she has staked her reputation on
her ability to enact meaningful reforms.

In order to succeed, she must first win over the senators who can
reject her nominee for superintendent, and avoid alienating the
pro-trooper voters whose support she will need next year in her race
for the U.S. Senate.

But that will only be possible if the governor can convince the public
that the best way to show admiration for an institution is to confront
its problems.

"To say there are areas where we don't need change is to ignore the
obvious," Whitman said at a recent news conference. "But we are
determined to change this."