EDITORIAL OBSERVER

WHY 'RACIAL PROFILING' WILL BE TOUGH TO FIGHT

The "racial profiling" scandal in New Jersey has quieted down
while civil rights lawyers and Federal officials mull over how to discourage
state police from targeting and searching motorists based solely on race.
Black New Jerseyans had complained for years about this practice and felt
vindicated when the Justice Department threatened to sue if New Jersey did
not work on a remedy. After years of stalling, Gov. Christine Todd Whitman
conceded that some state troopers had deliberately singled out black
motorists.

But a plan that discourages profiling will be difficult to forge. The
lesson from Maryland, for example, is that police continue to target
and harass minority motorists even after high-profile lawsuits and
consent decrees have required them to stop. Agreements hammered out in
court could take years to change the way police officers behave.

The harassment of innocent black motorists has become an issue in
California, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and elsewhere. But
the most instructive case is that of Maryland, which has been
embroiled in this matter since 1992, when state police illegally
searched and detained a black lawyer named Robert L. Wilkins,
violating his constitutional rights. The officers were following
department guidelines that explicitly singled out black males who
drove expensive cars and carried beepers -- a description that fit
doctors, lawyers and businessmen.

Maryland paid to settle Wilkins v. Maryland State Police out of court
and agreed to maintain detailed records, beginning in 1995, of all
motorist stops in which the police requested permission to search
vehicles. But discrimination continued along the highways. The
detailed records showed such vivid discrimination that the Maryland
N.A.A.C.P. used them as the basis of a class action lawsuit that is
making its way through a Federal District Court in Baltimore.

Court records show that black motorists account for 17 percent of the
traffic -- and the same percentage of speeders -- along Interstate 95
in northeastern Maryland. But the data collected by the police show
that 77 percent of the motorists who were stopped and searched between
1995 and 1997 were minority drivers who were no more likely to be
guilty of anything than were the whites who were stopped. Maryland
tried to argue that the practice was justified, despite data showing
little overall difference in drug use between blacks and whites.

The records compiled to satisfy the Wilkins settlement contain a
detailed audit of state police traffic stops and a close portrait of
each officer's behavior. The records show that two officers named in
the class action suit stopped only black motorists. Testifying in a
deposition, a senior state police officer admitted that the brass
thought nothing of the numbers and did nothing to follow up -- even
though the department had signed the settlement agreement in the
Wilkins case.

The class action complaint describes 17 cases of black motorists who
were stopped for no apparent reason. The suit could eventually include
hundreds of other motorists.

One of the named plaintiffs, Gary Rodwell of Philadelphia, was pulled
over and detained for three hours on Interstate 95 in Harford County.
When Mr. Rodwell asked for an explanation, an officer said he "looked
like a drug dealer."

Mr. Rodwell's car was searched twice -- once by hand, then by a
drug-sniffing dog. When the search turned up nothing, the officer told
Mr. Rodwell that he was going to arrest him anyway. But instead of
taking him in, the officer gave Mr. Rodwell's car to a tow-truck
operator, who declined to return it until Mr. Rodwell paid him $80.

Another Maryland trooper has pleaded guilty to robbing black motorists
in addition to searching them.

Maryland state police officers seem to have recorded most of their
data honestly. But accusations of records fraud by some New Jersey
state police officers will make it difficult -- and expensive -- to
document misconduct in the Garden State. Two state troopers have
already been indicted for doctoring records, and more indictments
could be on the way. Investigators discovered the discrepancies by
tracking down motorists listed in the records and determining that the
officers had stopped black motorists and listed them as white.

The authorities will need to perform these detailed audits not just in
criminal investigations, but also as part of a regular routine. The
auditors also need to be insulated from interference by the police.
Only a constant threat of exposure will prevent bigots in uniform from
acting out their beliefs.