CUSTOMS SERVICE APPOINTS PANEL TO PROBE COMPLAINTS OF RACIAL BIAS

WASHINGTON -- Faced with a growing chorus of racial-bias complaints,
the U.S. Customs Service created an independent panel Thursday to
review the policies and procedures used by inspectors looking for
airline passengers who might be smuggling drugs.

Customs Commissioner Raymond Kelly pledged that the commission,
composed of officials from other government agencies and headed by
Smithsonian Institution Undersecretary Constance Newman, will have
"unfettered access" to the agency's records and personnel during its
three-month investigation.

"If a bias exists, whether perceived or real, it is paramount that we
find its cause and eliminate it," Kelly said.

Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), who asked last month for a formal
investigation into complaints of racial bias by inspectors at
Atlanta's Hartsfield International Airport, called the creation of the
panel "an important first step."

"Something is happening, not just in Atlanta, but in New York and
Chicago and other parts of the country," said Lewis. "We need to
determine why so many of our citizens--African-Americans, Hispanics
and others--are complaining."

Kelly insisted that racial profiling -- selecting passengers for
searches based on race--is not policy, but, "we want to see if in
fact, maybe it's developed into a practice that we want to stop."

The Customs Service faces numerous lawsuits over body searches,
including a proposed class-action lawsuit filed by almost 100 black
women in Chicago alleging they were singled out because of their race
and gender.

Customs officers use strip searches, body cavity searches and X-rays
to catch smugglers who hide cocaine or heroin inside their clothes or
swallow packets of the drugs.

Officials of the agency said 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.