FOLLOWING UP

REFLECTING ON PROFILING, AND FAMOUS LAST WORDS

Was he part of the problem, or a scapegoat in the fallout?

Either way, Carl A. Williams found his 35-year career with the New Jersey
State Police - the last five as its leader - swiftly ended in 1999 after a
newspaper quoted him as saying that cocaine and marijuana traffickers were
most likely to be members of minority groups.

Gov. Christie Whitman ousted him as state police superintendent as a
coalition of black legislators, ministers and civil rights advocates called
his statement racist and demanded his removal.

The article, in The Star-Ledger of Newark, came amid intense controversy
over accusations that state troopers looking to make drug arrests regularly
engaged in racial profiling by singling out minority drivers for stops and
searches on the state's highways.

Even before his published remarks, which the governor called inconsistent
with efforts to improve the troopers' image, Mr. Williams had been accused
by critics of refusing to acknowledge what they called a long history of
racial profiling by the troopers. His supporters noted that it was not
until a month after she fired him that Governor Whitman conceded that some
troopers engaged in such profiling.

Last week, Mr. Williams, 61, was pithy in his view of his dismissal. "I was
sacrificed," he said. "I just quoted reality" in the 1999 article.

He recalled that he had also said in the article that his linking of
various groups to certain kinds of drug trafficking was based on government
statistics, that predominantly white motorcycle gangs appeared to control
the methamphetamine market, and that racial profiling stops were wrong and
that he would not condone them.

Still bitter over his dismissal? "It wasn't one of the nicest things that
happened to me in my life," he said.

Mr. Williams said he spends his time volunteering, traveling and
exercising. "Being in good shape," he said, "helps keep my sanity."