REBUKED TROOPERS CUT DRUG SEARCHES

State Police Admit Bias Suit Led To Big Drop In I-95 Seizures In '97;
Rappaport Raised Issue

Seizures of drugs from motorists along Interstate 95 almost ground to
a halt last year primarily because of state troopers' reaction to an
American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit accusing the Maryland State
Police of stopping drivers on the basis of their race, state police
officials acknowledged yesterday.

Col. David B. Mitchell, the state police superintendent, essentially
confirmed charges leveled by Republican attorney general candidate
Paul H. Rappaport that drug confiscations along I-95 north of
Baltimore dropped dramatically from 1995 to 1997.

Mitchell said that decline also reflected a shift by drug dealers to
other methods of transporting their wares. He said that state police
seizures of drugs shipped through other channels have multiplied and
that confiscations along I-95 have rebounded strongly in 1998.

The record of the state police in seizing drugs took on political
significance last week when Rappaport injected the issue into his
campaign to oust three-term Democratic Attorney General J. Joseph
Curran Jr. Rappaport said Curran's handling of the ACLU lawsuit, which
charges that troopers have unfairly targeted blacks for traffic stops
and searches, was in large part the cause of the decline.

Curran and the state police disputed that assertion.

The matter was taken seriously enough that Lynne A. Battaglia, the
U.S. attorney for Maryland, fired off a letter expressing concern that
the fall-off in drug searches is hindering prosecution of drug kingpins.

Capt. Gregory M. Shipley, the state police spokesman, said seizures of
heroin by troopers statewide during traffic stops declined from 9.1
pounds in 1995 and 4.0 pounds in 1996 to 0.2 pounds in 1997. Seizures
of other drugs showed similar declines statewide: Cocaine seizures
went from 136.4 pounds in 1995 and 200.6 pounds in 1996 to 4.2 pounds
in 1997.

Seizures of crack cocaine fell from 50.0 pounds in 1995 and 64.3
pounds in 1996 to 5.1 pounds in 1997.

Marijuana confiscations declined from 843.6 pounds in 1995 to 132.8
pounds in 1996 and 107 pounds in 1997.

Rappaport, a former state police major and Howard County police chief
who maintains extensive contacts in law enforcement, provided almost
identical figures last week -- saying they had been passed to him by
sources "outside official channels."

Biggest decline in Perryville

Figures from the John F. Kennedy Barracks in Perryville -- which has
made a disproportionate share of the seizures because of its location
along I-95 -- show the bulk of the decline took place along that busy
corridor.

The decline in drug seizures in 1997 indicates that some troopers may
have interpreted the agency's policy against race-based traffic stops
and searches as a blanket ban on consent searches -- searches made
when a suspicious trooper asks permission to search a vehicle despite
not having probable cause.

But Shipley cited figures for 1998 that showed the number of consent
searches by the Perryville barracks increased from 86 in the first
three quarters of 1997 to 264 in the first three quarters of 1998.

Mitchell ascribed the 1997 drop to troopers' concerns about being
added as defendants in the ACLU lawsuit and the "chilling effect" of
heavy publicity the case received two years ago.

Rappaport pinned the blame squarely on Curran, charging that the
Democrat had told state troopers he would not defend them if they
stopped and searched the cars of any drivers from a minority group.

Curran defends actions

Curran denied that allegation, saying his office had handled the case
vigorously on behalf of the state police and individual troopers who
were named as defendants in the ACLU suit.

"We are defending all the state police in the current action, and we
are defending all state police in any other action," Curran said.

The attorney general said he and his assistants had told troopers they
must not use race alone as a basis for stopping and searching a
driver's vehicle -- a policy reinforced by a directive from Mitchell.
"In America you don't stop and search a person because he's black,"
Curran said in an interview last week.

Rappaport's charge that Curran had lost troopers' confidence drew
support from Sgt. Millard McKay, president of the Maryland Troopers
Association. McKay said statements by Assistant Attorney General Betty
Sconion gave troopers the impression they would not be "properly
represented" by Curran's office.

McKay, whose association has endorsed Rappaport, said that impression
made some troopers reluctant to conduct consent searches. "They
weren't going to put their families and their homes in jeopardy if the
attorney general wasn't going to vigorously represent them," he said.

McKay said Curran and Mitchell have since met with troopers and
assured them that they could expect representation. He said that "it's
taken a long time to get that message across to the troopers," but
that they are coming around to the belief that the state will back
them.

Battaglia sounds alarm

Nevertheless, the declines in 1997 were so abrupt that Battaglia fired
off an urgent letter to Curran, Mitchell and Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy
Townsend.

"I understand that a pending lawsuit has led the attorneys for the
state police to be cautious in evaluating the efficacy of the
utilization of the traffic stop as a law enforcement tool," Battaglia
wrote. "I believe, however, that the caution, although
well-intentioned, could be hindering the development of
courier-witnesses and the deterrence of large-scale narcotics
traffickers in the state of Maryland."

The current controversy over race-based searches dates back to 1992,
when the ACLU filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of a black Washington
lawyer and his family, charging that the state police were targeting
African-American motorists for stops and searches.

In 1995, Maryland -- represented by the Attorney General's Office --
agreed to a settlement under which the state police agreed not to use
race as a factor in drug searches -- without admitting they had been
doing so. As part of the settlement, the police agreed to send
quarterly reports to U.S. District Judge Catherine C. Blake listing
the races of motorists and the reasons troopers asked for drivers'
consent to search their cars.

The ACLU went back to court in 1996 after those reports showed that 73
percent of the drivers detained along I-95 from January 1995 to
September 1996 were black. An ACLU survey found that 16.9 percent of
motorists on the highway were African-Americans.

At the time, the Temple University professor who designed the ACLU
survey said that with almost three-quarters of the searches involving
blacks, the odds that race was not a factor were "about one in a
quintillion."

In April 1997, Blake ruled that the ACLU had made a "reasonable
showing [of] a pattern and practice of discrimination" concentrated in
the area of northeast Maryland served by the Perryville barracks.

Checked-by: Patrick Henry