STRIP SEARCHES AT O'HARE AIRPORT RAISE EYEBROWS

Females - particularly black women - were subjected to many more U.S.
Customs strip searches than men at O'Hare International Airport last year.

Yet few of those searches turned up contraband.

That's according to figures released Tuesday by U.S. Sens. Dick Durbin and
Carol Moseley-Braun, Illinois Democrats who are now calling on a federal
agency to broaden an investigation of O'Hare Customs by taking a closer
look at training procedures and standards nationally.

Specifically, they want the General Accounting Office to find out if
discrimination plays any part in searches and what can be done to reverse
course.

"If you stand out at O'Hare and watched the passengers getting on and off
aircraft ... you would find the overwhelming number are male," Durbin said.
"So there really is a focus on women, and on black women.

"But it's very difficult to justify what they are doing based on their
results," he said about Customs.

Of the 104 strip searches in 1997, 27 turned up drugs. Of the 104, 77 were
women. And of those females, 47 were black, 25 were white, four were
Hispanic and one was Asian. Drugs were found in possession of eight black
women, six white women and one Hispanic woman.

Drugs were also discovered on five white men, three black men and four
Hispanic men.

Cherise Miles, a spokeswoman for Customs in Chicago, said her agency does
not "target" a certain group of people.

"It's never based solely on race, ethnic origin or gender," she said. "It
could be nervous behavior (that attracts attention of inspectors), it could
be the way a person is dressed. It could be where they're coming from.

"We stand by our inspectors," she said. "They are very professional. We
have a job to do out there. Of course we'll continue to improve our search
techniques, and we will cooperate with the senators, but our mission
remains the same, to stop drugs."

During last year's strip searches, 56 pounds of cocaine and 11/2 pounds of
heroin were recovered, said Pat Noonan, a passenger services representative
for U.S. Customs in Chicago.

Durbin said some of the Customs supervisors are minorities who are adamant
that race doesn't play a role in the searches. He added that he and
Moseley-Braun are still waiting for figures from the previous four years
from Customs, which he said has been slow to respond to their requests.

A federal lawsuit was filed last spring in Chicago on behalf of 18 black
women subjected to searches at O'Hare - though no contraband was found on
them. Within the next week, the suit will be amended to add more names,
said attorney Ed Fox. He added he was skeptical of the new figures.

"I'm pretty confident many more black women were strip searched than what
they're admitting to," he said about Customs. "They are clearly targeting
black women for strip searches without reasonable suspicion. (And) it's
purely for harassment."

Moseley-Braun wouldn't go that far.

"I think the law enforcement people looking for drugs have gone overboard,"
she said. "Quite frankly, (some) of the people that are conducting the
searches are black as well, so I don't think it's deliberate, but it's
certainly reality. So we have to find some balance."

Checked-by: (Joel W. Johnson)