DRUG COPS ENLIST HELP OF MOTEL WORKERS

N.J. Effort Accused of Racial Profiling

In an effort to catch drug smugglers who travel through Newark International
Airport, the New Jersey State Police have quietly enlisted workers at dozens
of motels to tip them off about guests who pay for rooms in cash, receive a
flurry of telephone calls or, in some cases, simply speak Spanish,
according to people who have participated in the program.

The Hotel-Motel Program, operated out of the State Police special projects
unit since the early 1990s, has recruited managers and employees at an
undisclosed number of places to act as informers in their anti-drug
initiative.

Hotel managers who participate in the program say they allow troopers to
routinely leaf through the credit card receipts and registration forms of
guests without a warrant, and offer $1,000 rewards to hotel workers whose
tips lead to arrests.

In return, the hotel and motel managers say, they are assured that any
searches or arrests will occur after the suspect leaves the hotel premises,
and their workers will never be required to testify or have their names
disclosed in court documents.

At the heart of the program are the troopers' surveillance seminars, which
train front desk clerks, bellhops and porters to scrutinize guests who fit
the profile of drug traffickers by asking for corner rooms, hauling trailers
behind their cars or frequently moving from room to room. Several hotel
employees and union leaders said troopers have also trained them to take
racial characteristics into account and pay particular attention to guests
who speak Spanish.

State Police officials, who have been besieged for years by charges that
troopers illegally target African American and Latino motorists, acknowledge
that hotel personnel have been enlisted as informers, but they vehemently
deny that race plays any role. Lt. Bruce Geleta, who commands the unit,
declined to discuss what factors troopers teach hotel employees to look for,
saying that he did not want to alert drug traffickers to his tactics. But he
insisted race was not among them.

"Believe me, these days, we're very careful not to do anything like that,"
he said last month.

But Clo Smith, a front desk clerk at a Holiday Inn near Newark
International, said she sat through the hourlong seminar three years ago and
was offended that the State Police detective suggested that Spanish-speaking
guests should be treated with more suspicion than those who speak English.

"Let's just say I found it somewhat insensitive," said Smith, the union
steward for Teamsters Local 819, which represents front desk employees at
the hotel.

David Feeback, president of Hotel and Restaurant Employees Local 69 in
Secaucus, said some union members have complained that troopers have
pressured them to participate and report some of the patrons at hotel
restaurants who pay with large sums of cash.

"It's racial profiling, plain and simple," he said. "They shouldn't be
discriminating against people that way. And if any of my members ask, I tell
them to have nothing to do with it."

But one manager involved in the program, Fred Hartman, who runs the Ramada

Inn Newark Airport, said he never actually sat through a training session,
but was convinced that it did not involve race.