CUSTOMS SERVICE WILL REVIEW DRUG-SEARCH PROCESS FOR BIAS

WASHINGTON -- Faced with complaints that black and
Hispanic people are unfairly singled out for searches at airports and
border crossings, the United States Customs Service created an
independent panel Thursday to study how customs inspectors look for
drug smugglers.

"If a bias exists, whether perceived or real, it is paramount that we
find its cause and eliminate it," Customs Commissioner Raymond W.
Kelly said. While insisting that it is not his agency's policy to
single out people based on race, Kelly said, "we want to see if, in
fact, maybe it's developed into a practice that we want to stop."

Kelly said the panel would be made up of officials from other
Government agencies and would have "unfettered access" to Customs
Service records and employees during its three-month inquiry. The
panel will be led by Constance Newman, under secretary of the
Smithsonian Institution.

"We're taking the problem head on; we're dealing with it," Kelly said.
"The people on the panel are enthusiastic."

Representative John Lewis, a Georgia Democrat who called last month
for an investigation into complaints of racial bias by customs
inspectors at Hartsfield International Airport in Atlanta, said today
that the formation of the panel was "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, who appeared at a
news conference with Kelly. "We need to determine why so many of our
citizens -- African Americans, Hispanics and others -- are
complaining."

Lewis's press secretary, Jack Pannell, said today that while the
Congressman was very pleased with Kelly's response, he considered
racial-profiling by law enforcement so serious that he wants
Congressional hearings on the issue.

Of the 71.5 million air travelers who passed through United States
customs in 1998, about 51,000 were subjected to body searches, the
Customs Service said. Most searches were simple "pat-downs," but
inspectors sometimes resort to strip searches, body-cavity searches
and X-rays to detect drugs that have been concealed in clothing or
swallowed.

The Customs Service faces numerous lawsuits over body searches. About
100 black women are hoping to file a class-action suit in Chicago
alleging that they were singled out because of their race and gender.

The service's statistics seem to indicate that while black and
Hispanic people are more likely to be searched, they are not more
likely to be caught smuggling drugs. Nationally, 43.3 percent of those
people subjected to body searches or X-rays in 1998 were black or
Hispanic. Drugs were found on 6.3 percent of the black people
searched, 6.7 percent of the white people searched and only 2.8
percent of the Hispanic people searched.

"The vast majority of searches are not random," Kelly said. "We do
target certain countries and certain flights. You don't get a true
picture if you just concentrate on the ethnicity." Flights from
Jamaica, Colombia and other Latin American countries get extra
scrutiny from customs inspectors, as do some from West African
nations, Kelly said.

The Commissioner said about 18 percent of the 7,000 customs inspectors
are Hispanic, 11 percent black and the rest white or Asian. Roughly
the same percentages apply to the service's 20,000 employees, he said.

Besides Ms. Newman, who is black, members of the panel are Robin Renee
Sanders, the National Security Council's director for Africa, and Ana
Marie Salazar, deputy assistant secretary of defense for drug
enforcement policy and support. Sanford Cloud Jr., president of the
National Conference for Community and Justice, was named the panel's
adviser. Ms. Sanders and Cloud are black and Ms. Salazar is Hispanic.

Kelly said he hoped to find ways to make searches less of an ordeal,
even when they are deemed necessary.

"Nobody wants to be searched; it's an unpleasant experience," Kelly
acknowledged, adding that conducting searches is unpleasant for the
inspectors as well.