HEARINGS PROMISED TO COMBAT PROFILING

MINORITY LEADERS STUDY TROOPER STOPS

Promising to "bring to justice those who have been unjust," leading minority
lawmakers Tuesday put forth a call for victims of racial bias on the state's
highways.

Members of the New Jersey Legislative Black and Latino Caucus say they are
organizing a series of hearings across the state as open forums for anyone
who knows of troopers who pick on motorists because of the color of their
skin.

Caucus members, speaking at a State House news conference two days after
State Police Superintendent Carl A. Williams was fired for making racially
insensitive remarks, said complaints from angry minority motorists are
flooding their offices.

"It's time the procrastination, denials, and silence on racial profiling
came to an end," said Assemblyman Joseph Charles Jr., D-Jersey City,
chairman of the caucus. "This is not hysteria, this is not paranoia, it is
real."

The hearings could begin in three to four weeks at several sites around the
state and continue for up to four months.

In the interim, the minority lawmakers promised to press their concerns on
several other fronts. When President Clinton arrives in New Jersey today for
a Democratic Party fund-raiser, they plan to ask him to speed up a
three-year-old U.S. Department of Justice investigation of state police
operations in New Jersey. They also said they would reintroduce legislation
that would form a task force on racial profiling.

And they pledged to defeat Attorney General Peter Verniero's nomination to
the New Jersey Supreme Court unless Governor Whitman delays state Senate
confirmation hearings that could begin as soon as March 18.

"Before Mr. Verniero receives a promotion, we need to have some questions
answered: What did he know about racial profiling in the state police he
supposedly oversees? When did he know it? And what did he do about it?" said
state Senator Wayne R. Bryant, D-Camden.

Spokesmen for both Verniero and Whitman, however, said there was no chance
the confirmation would be shelved. They said the minority lawmakers were
trying to make political hay out of the state police controversy.

"The caucus has heard anecdotes about racial profiling for the past 20 years
and all of a sudden they're getting religion?" said Pete McDonough,
Whitman's communications director. "They obviously want to make a Republican
governor look bad for political purposes.

"But what more can this governor do than she's already done? She's already
put video cameras into patrol cars. She's already started the biggest
internal investigation of the state police in 70 years."

McDonough said that six recent New Jersey attorneys general, both Democrat
and Republican, issued a statement Tuesday supporting a quick confirmation
of Verniero. The one-paragraph memo, signed by James Zazzali, William
Hyland, W. Cary Edwards, John Degnan, Robert J. Del Tufo, and Peter
Perretti, urges lawmakers to "avoid politicization of the process."

McDonough also chided caucus members for trumping up Clinton's alleged
concerns about the racial profiling controversy.

"It's just a grip and grin on the tarmac," he said.

Even though the vast majority of New Jersey's 19 black and Hispanic
lawmakers are Democrats, they denied any political motivation was behind
their call for statewide hearings. They said they are coming forward now
because recent events have made the time ripe, including the firing of
Williams and the release of data from the first two months of 1997 showing
that three in four people arrested on the New Jersey Turnpike were
minorities.

"The climate for ascertaining the truth has never been like this before,"
said Charles.

The racial profiling issue has simmered for years in New Jersey and other
states. It re-ignited in April 1998, when two state troopers patrolling the
New Jersey Turnpike stopped a van carrying four minority passengers and then
fired 11 shots into the van, injuring three of the passengers. The shooting
is being investigated by a state grand jury.

Three weeks ago, the state Attorney General's Office said it was beginning a
comprehensive four-month review of all state police operations. Williams'
dismissal earlier this week came after the 35-year veteran told a newspaper
that minorities are more involved in cocaine and marijuana trafficking.