ORLANDO, Fla. (Reuter) Black drivers stopped on Florida's
Turnpike by a central Florida sheriff's drug squad are 6 1/2 times
more likely to be searched than white motorists, the Orlando
Sentinel reported on Sunday.

Blacks constitute only 16.3 percent of drivers stopped by
Sheriff Kevin Beary's Criminal Patrol Unit, but they account for
more than half of the searches and more than 70 percent of
searches involving dogs, the newspaper said.

The Sentinel said it reviewed records on more than 3,800
stops and nearly 500 searches by Beary's squad, which recently
has been involved in two nationally televised events. One was
the angry arrest of a black police major from the Miami area in
April, and the other was a 100mile chase in May of a black drug
suspect who was wounded by deputies.

Beary denied race played a role. ``We are not out there
targeting any specific race,'' he told the Sentinel. ``It's a
casebycase basis.''

The study came at a time when many AfricanAmericans protest
what is known as the police practice of pulling over motorists
for ``Driving While Black.''

The Sentinel said records of traffic stops by Beary's squad
from January 1996 through April 1997 showed that 39.6 percent of
black motorists were searched, compared with 6.2 percent of
white motorists. Drivers listed as Asian, Hispanic or other
ethnicities were searched 17.9 percent of the time.

More than 80 percent of the searches did not find any drugs,
as with other highway drug units across the country, the
newspaper said.