SHOOTING INQUIRY CENTERS ON CLAIM OF 'PROFILING' BY TROOPERS

The police, among themselves, call it "profiling," making a traffic stop of
someone they believe likely to be involved in the drug trade.
African-Americans give it another another name, "D.W.B." -- Driving While
Black.

The practice, the subject of growing debate in courts around the country,
appears to be central to the inquiry into an incident in New Jersey last
month in which state troopers pulled over four young men on their way to a
college basketball clinic. Before the incident was over, the troopers had
fired 11 shots into the van, wounding three of the passengers, two
seriously.

For years, there have been accusations that troopers along the New Jersey
Turnpike -- where virtually everyone drives over the 55-mile-per-hour limit
- -- were pulling over black or Hispanic drivers solely based on race, in hope
of making drug arrests.

Citing a "stark" disparity in which black drivers were 4.85 times as likely
as white drivers to be pulled over by troopers, a state court judge ruled in
1996 that the police had a policy of "selective enforcement" by "targeting
blacks for investigation and arrest."

The judge, Robert E. Francis of Superior Court in Gloucester County, added
that "the utter failure of the state police hierarchy to monitor and control
a crackdown program" or to "investigate the many claims of institutional
discrimination, manifests its indifference if not acceptance."

"The eradication of illegal drugs from our state is an obviously worthy
goal," Judge Francis wrote, "but not at the expense of individual rights."

Despite the court ruling, one of the troopers involved in the latest
incident, John Hogan, has made at least 19 arrests as a result of traffic
stops that defense lawyers have contended were based on racial profiling of
Hispanic or black drivers.

And the New Jersey State Police itself has a long history of accusations of
racism. Indeed, only last March 24, a Federal District Court judge ruled
that a trooper of Filipino origin had suffered racial discrimination and a
hostile work environment. The judge wrote that her decision was based on
testimony that white officers used a racial epithet to refer to a station
with a number of black troopers. She wrote that troopers used racial
profiles in traffic stops and that a trooper told a black driver in one
instance that he could avoid a ticket if he tap-danced on the side of the
road. A supervisor named in testimony as one of the Filipino trooper's main
tormentors, Sgt. Ronald Franz, is now a captain in command of Troop D, which
patrols the turnpike.

Among the issues that lawyers and law enforcement officials have raised
about the shooting, which is being investigated by a special state
prosecutor, are the following:

- - Did the state troopers really stop the van because it was speeding or
simply because it contained young black and Latino men?

- - With sharp discrepancies between the accounts of the troopers and those of
the young men and a witness, who is telling the truth?

- - Was the use of deadly force by the troopers justified?

Around 11 o'clock on the night of April 23, two New Jersey State Police
officers, Trooper Hogan and Trooper James Kenna, stopped a 1997 Dodge
Caravan with New York plates on the turnpike in Washington Township.

In the van were four New York City men: Danny Reyes, 20; Keshon L. Moore,
22, the driver; Rayshawn Brown, 20, and Leroy Grant, 23. Mr. Reyes was shot
four times and remains hospitalized in Camden, N.J., with serious injuries
to his right arm and wounds in his torso. Mr. Grant was shot in the knee and
was released from the hospital Wednesday. Mr. Brown was grazed by a bullet.

Beyond that, nobody agrees on much of anything.

The initial press release issued the next day by Col. Carl A. Williams, the
State Police Superintendent, said that the incident began when the two
troopers "obtained a speed reading from radar" that clocked the van
"traveling at 74 m.p.h. in the turnpike's 55 m.p.h. speed zone."

It turned out, however, that the two troopers were not equipped with radar,
according to lawyers in the case. This discrepancy could be important in
light of a finding by Judge Francis in the Gloucester County case that
troopers using their own discretion stopped vastly higher percentages of
black drivers than troopers using radar, who stopped black drivers in line
with their proportion among all turnpike drivers.

The state police account said that the two troopers got out of their marked
patrol car and approached the van. Then, the police said, the van went into
reverse and began moving toward Trooper Hogan. As he tried to get out of the
way, the police said, he was struck on the right leg and fell.

Trooper Kenna, the police said, having lost sight of Trooper Hogan and
fearing that he had been hit by the van, fired at the rear of the moving
vehicle.

The van continued to back up, according to the police, striking the front of
the police car and pushing it back.

"Still moving in reverse, the Caravan crossed the southbound lanes of the
Turnpike and was struck by a 1988 Honda Accord," the police press release
said, adding that the force of the impact drove the Honda into the road
divider, causing it to burst into flames, slightly injuring the occupants.

"After striking the Honda, the Caravan continued to move forward at troopers
Kenna and Hogan," the press release said next, although this would appear to
indicate that the van had changed direction.

"The troopers fired several rounds from their service weapons at the
approaching vehicle," the police version said.

"Continuing to move forward, the vehicle crossed the travel lanes of the
roadway, finally coming to rest at the edge of the right shoulder."

But David G. Ironman, the lawyer for Mr. Reyes, said that when his
investigator examined the van and the police car, he found only minimal
damage to both rather than the dents to be expected from a forceful
collision.

Further, Mr. Ironman said, the windows shattered by gunfire were at the back
and sides of the van rather than the windshield, as might be expected from
police shooting at an oncoming vehicle.

A search of the van, Mr. Ironman said turned up, among other things, an
English paper graded "C" from Mr. Reyes's course at New York Technical
College, a volume of short stories by John Steinbeck, a Bible and the young
men's gym clothes for the clinic at North Carolina Central University, but
no drugs or other contraband.

"I believe it was a profile stop," Mr. Ironman said.

"But, of course, these New Jersey State Police cannot admit to it because
they know it's illegal.

I want to have the question answered by somebody: what was my client accused
of doing?"

Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., the high-profile defense lawyer, took over the case
last week and has instructed his clients not to talk to the news media.

But in earlier interviews with The Daily News, Mr. Reyes, who was in the
front passenger seat, said that one of the officers -- apparently Trooper
Kenna -- broke the side window of the van with his baton and fired inside.

Mr. Reyes said that the car was accidentally put into reverse, and that the
police kept firing, ignoring his shouts to stop.

A witness who drove by the scene has come forward with a description sharply
at odds with the police version of events and more consistent with that of
Mr. Reyes.

Juan Polk, an engineer with the Voice of America in New York, said in a
telephone interview that he was coming forward, after worrying for
days,because the initial news stories about the incident "didn't sound
anything like what I saw."

Mr. Polk said he was driving home along the turnpike that night --
carefully, he noted, because as a black man he was wary of the police. The
cruise control on his car was set at around 60 m.p.h. when he saw a state
police patrol car parked by the side of the parkway, lights off.

He had noticed a van traveling with him at about the same speed for a few
miles, he said.

In his rear view mirror, he saw the police car turn on its flashing lights
and pull onto the highway.

"He took off and started burning toward us," said Mr. Polk, who first gave
his account to Jim Dwyer, a columnist for The Daily News.

"I thought, 'Damn, I hope he's not coming for me.' The cops whizzed past me.

I thought they were going to whiz past the van, too."

Mr. Polk lost sight of the other vehicles around a curve and a hill. When he
saw them again, he said, "it was all flashing lights and motion." The van
was off the side of the road, he said, with two state troopers firing at it
from the back.

As he slowed to watch, he said, the van lurched forward, then rolled slowly
down into a kind of gully or ravine as the police continued shooting.

"They were blasting away," Mr. Polk said.

"I heard, like, four shots, then a pause, then they opened up. The van
lurches forward, goes maybe 10 or 15 feet out of control, then drives down
into the ditch.

"They were shooting at the back windows, shooting down into the car. It was
going forward; the backup lights never came on.

There wasn't much damage to the minivan, just the windows.

You could hear the popping sound and the glass exploding."

Although the police say that only one police car was involved in the initial
stop, Mr. Polk says he believes that he saw two cars parked behind the
stopped van, with a trooper taking shelter behind a door of each car while
firing.

Mr. Polk said that while he was in the area he saw no sign of a Honda
bursting into flames.

"It was like everything went into slow motion," said Mr. Polk, who initially
feared he might be shot himself if people were firing from inside the van.

"It seemed like it was happening for 15 minutes, but it could only have been
a few seconds."

After news surfaced of the van shooting, several public defenders and other
lawyers came forward to say they were familiar with Trooper Hogan because
they had accused him in court of making profile stops or planned to do so in
pending cases.

One lawyer, John L. Weichsel of Hackensack, said he had identified a pattern
of eight cases since 1995 in which Trooper Hogan pulled over Hispanic van
drivers for traffic infractions and later conducted searches resulting in
drug arrests. The cases all involved companies providing van service between
New York and Philadelphia.

Mr. Weichsel is representing Ishmael C. Ramirez, who was arrested by Trooper
Hogan on Aug. 9, 1997, and charged with cocaine possession after the van he
had been riding in was pulled over on the turnpike in Edison Township. In
his report, Trooper Hogan said he had paced the van at 75 to 79 m.p.h.

A list of the cases provided to Mr. Weichsel by the Middlesex County
Prosecutor's office shows that all involved Dodge vans, the same make as the
van involved in the shooting. In every case, the van had out-of-state
license plates, the driver had a Hispanic surname and heroin or cocaine was
seized.

"We would use the information to show a pattern of illegal stops and
searches based on the fact that the trooper lacked probable cause," Mr.
Weichsel said. "It raises the question in my mind of the trooper's
motivation and the reason why he's pulling all these vans over. All I know
is that over a relatively brief period of time, there were at least 11 van
stops in Middlesex County and 8 of them were by Hogan."

It is not unusual for lawyers defending minority clients to seek the
suppression of evidence by accusing officers of illegal stops and searches.
But several lawyers said they had encountered Trooper Hogan in a remarkable
number of such cases.

"At least a half-dozen cases when I was with the public defender's office
and two pending now," said Robin Kay Lord, a former public defender in
Mercer County who is now in private practice, recounting the times she
represented minority clients pulled over by Trooper Hogan.

Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company

Checked-by: "R. Lake"