Pubdate: Tue, 28 Nov 2000
Source: Star-Ledger (NJ)
Copyright: 2000 Newark Morning Ledger Co.
Contact:  1 Star-Ledger Plaza, Newark, N.J., 07102-1200
Website: http://www.nj.com/starledger/
Forum: http://www.nj.com/forums/
Author: Dunstan Mcnichol And Ron Marsico
Bookmark: Corruption articles: http://www.mapinc.org/corrupt.htm

AN IDEA ABOUT RACE AND A WAR ON DRUGS WENT HAND IN HAND

The File On Racial Profiling

Until last year, no governor or State Police superintendent had ever 
acknowledged racial profiling occurred under his or her watch.

But the documents released yesterday show that over the past 15 years the 
top ranks of state government whipsawed between zealous attempts to stop 
drug trafficking and concerns that their tactics were unfair to minorities.

Attorney General John Farmer Jr. acknowledged that despite periodic efforts 
to end police practices that targeted minorities, state officials had never 
been able to root them out. Even an explicit ban on racial profiling in 
1990, and the dismissal of 20 troopers in 1992, failed to eradicate the 
practice, he said.

"The department acknowledged abuse and tried to address it," Farmer said 
yesterday. Yet each time the issue soon resurfaced.

Interviews with former governors and State Police superintendents traced 
the problem to a stepped-up war on drugs in the late 1980s.

The state's 1987 Uniform Drug Reform Act, an aggressive attorney general, 
and Operation Pipeline, a federal initiative to snatch drug couriers off 
major highways, put state troopers on the front line of the burgeoning war 
against drugs.

"The real problem came under the tenure of Cary Edwards," said Col. Clinton 
L. Pagano, referring to the attorney general who assumed the post in 1986, 
late in Pagano's 14-year run as State Police superintendent. "We were under 
tremendous public pressure, people demonstrating in the streets: Get drugs 
off the streets."

Troopers' drug arrests shot upward from just over 4,000 in 1985 to more 
than 10,000 arrests each year in 1988 and 1989, Pagano's last years in charge.

Even as the arrest tally rose, so did complaints from minority leaders and 
drivers that they were being unfairly targeted as suspected drug runners.

Tom Kean, who was governor at the time, says he cannot recall the issue of 
racial profiling coming up during his terms in office.

But in 1996, in a landmark case that helped push the issue of racial 
profiling to national prominence, a Superior Court judge in Gloucester 
County concluded that the troopers Pagano sent out to intercept drugs on 
the southern reaches of the New Jersey Turnpike had engaged in racial 
profiling.

Pagano disputes the notion of a systemic problem.

"If they look deeply enough into what was done during my tenure, they'll 
see that where there was a factual basis, action was taken and it was 
handled as best it could have been handled at the time," he said recently.

In 1990, a new governor, Jim Florio, and a new State Police superintendent, 
Justin J. Dintino, set out to end the problem. On his first day in office 
that February, Dintino published new search procedures that specifically 
outlawed targeting drivers based on their race or other physical appearances.

"I said I didn't care if we didn't make one drug arrest; I didn't want to 
violate anyone's constitutional rights," Dintino said recently. "Racial 
profiling was all but eliminated."

Drug arrests also plummeted.

 From the 1989 arrest total of 10,126, the number of State Police drug 
arrests plunged to 5,762 in 1990, and to 4,427 the following year.

Florio, who appointed Dintino, said African-American ministers had alerted 
him to the problem of racial profiling even as he was coming into office. 
Later, he said, the American Civil Liberties Union told him there had been 
a drop in profiling complaints in the six months after Dintino's policies 
were put into place.

Dintino said the improper focus on minorities arose simply because troopers 
told one another the best way to boost their arrest rates was to target 
minorities. And records show that awards and promotions often were based on 
arrest statistics.

"The troopers know where they're going to get the most action. The troopers 
know minorities are involved in transporting drugs on the highway more than 
whites," Dintino said. "As far as who was smuggling drugs, it's no secret: 
The Colombians were involved in smuggling drugs into this country and then 
you have a lot of black organized crime gangs who push the drugs in the 
urban areas."

But that didn't justify profiling, Dintino said. "I took measures to stop 
it. It's illegal. It's not right. You're violating people's constitutional 
rights."

Dintino's successor, career-long State Trooper Carl Williams, was selected 
by Gov. Christie Whitman specifically to restore sagging morale. At 
Williams' swearing-in in June 1994, Whitman said, "The troopers have 
someone who really believes in them."

Throughout his tenure, as the issue of racial profiling rose to greater and 
greater prominence, Williams repeatedly defended the integrity of the troopers.

In March 1996, after Superior Court Judge Robert E. Francis determined 
racial profiling had occurred on the Turnpike and dismissed charges against 
17 motorists, Williams sent a teletype to troopers saying, "I strongly 
disagree with the judge's rulings and assertions."

"The division of State Police will continue to support troopers who do 
their jobs in a lawful manner," the teletype concluded. "Do your job 
correctly and this office, in conjunction with the Attorney General's 
Office, will always provide the legal representation required to defend our 
members."

In the February 1999 interview that ended up costing him his job, Williams 
staunchly denied there was a system of profiling among troopers. But he 
also laid out connections between various ethnic groups and particular 
elements of the illegal drug trade. The Governor said those comments 
undermined the state's efforts to eliminate racial profiling, and she 
demanded Williams' resignation.

Two months later, Whitman's attorney general, Peter Verniero, released a 
landmark report in which the state acknowledged that troopers engaged in 
racial profiling.

"Upon becoming aware that racial profiling was being practiced by some 
members of the State Police, Governor Whitman became the first governor in 
the nation to admit racial profiling existed," Whitman's spokesman Pete 
McDonough said. "And the first governor in the nation to do something about 
it."

Staff writer David Kinney contributed to this report.
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