Pubdate: Tue, 28 Nov 2000
Source: Bergen Record (NJ)
Copyright: 2000 Bergen Record Corp.
Contact:  http://www.bergen.com/cgi-bin/feedback
Website: http://www.bergen.com/
Author: Wendy Ruderman, Trenton Bureau
Note: Trenton Correspondents Jeff Pillets, Randy Diamond, and Herb Jackson 
and Staff Writer Paul Johnson contributed to this article.

PROFILING WAS USED IN WAR ON DRUGS

Attorney General John J. Farmer Jr. released more than 90,000 documents 
Monday showing that high-ranking state officials embraced a "war on drugs" 
at the cost of violating the civil rights of black and Hispanic motorists.

Farmer said the state's anti-drug policy encouraging New Jersey troopers to 
consider race as a factor when determining whom to stop on the roadway 
yielded "pretty good" drug catches, but resulted in a disastrous erosion of 
trust between minorities and troopers.

Troopers began using race as a factor in the late 1980s at the height of a 
federal drug interdiction program, known as Operation Pipeline. But last 
year, the Attorney General's Office ended the practice, prohibiting 
troopers from considering race at all, even though federal courts have 
ruled that it was legal for law enforcement officers to consider race as 
one of several factors when stopping and searching motorists.

Statistics previously released by the state showed seven out of 10 minority 
motorists searched for drugs by troopers were found not guilty.

"It's my hope in releasing these documents that we can sort of pay our debt 
to the past," Farmer said. "It's become clear to me over the year and a 
half that I've been here that that hasn't been fully accounted for."

The documents, which were made available in a public reading room in the 
Hughes Justice Complex in Trenton and on 15 CD-ROMs, range from mundane 
traffic tickets to training materials used at the state police academy and 
to confidential memos between state police and the Attorney General's Office.

Governor Whitman commended Farmer's release of the documents, which total 
91,000 pages and date as far back as 1985.

"The release of documents covering three gubernatorial terms and the tenure 
of seven different attorneys general is one more step in ensuring that 
there is never again confusion between aggressive police work and the 
rights of law-abiding motorists," Whitman wrote in a statement.

The Black Ministers Council of New Jersey decried efforts by the attorney 
general to "spin" the documents to make the state look less culpable. They 
said the documents will show a long-standing effort by the state to cover 
up evidence of racial profiling.

"When these documents are reviewed it will show that the practice of racial 
profiling has been going on knowingly for two decades," the Rev. Reginald 
Jackson, executive director of the Black Ministers Council of New Jersey, 
said at a news conference at St. Matthew's AME Church in Orange on Monday.

"These documents will show that this administration denied racial profiling 
even when it knew it [existed]," Jackson said.

Assemblyman LeRoy J. Jones Jr., D-Essex, said the state has failed to take 
action on allegations of racial profiling.

"Leadership has been absent," Jones said. "Leadership is about recognizing 
the need for reform. We're not going to let Mr. Farmer spin this."

The documents seem to bolster a pile of lawsuits filed by minority troopers 
and minority motorists who claim they were victims of racial discrimination 
by troopers and assert that state officials knew their complaints were 
legitimate but ignored or sought to discredit them.

Lawyers representing minority motorists spent much of the day combing 
through the long-secret documents, many of which are stamped 
"confidential," in search of memos to back up their lawsuits. The documents 
didn't disappoint.

After leafing through some of the papers, William Buckman, a 
Moorestown-based lawyer representing several minority motorists, began to 
talk settlement.

"Certainly, the extent of attorney general awareness that racial profiling 
was deep-seated and widespread is undeniable," Buckman said. "From my 
standpoint, it would be prudent for state officials to talk about resolving 
these things, because that's in the best interest of the taxpayers."

Some of the documents released Monday had been obtained by The Record last 
month. Those documents showed that Farmer's predecessor, Peter Verniero, 
sought to limit the amount of information to be turned over to U.S. Justice 
Department investigators looking into allegations of racial profiling on 
the New Jersey Turnpike.

Farmer said Monday that the documents do not show Verniero, now a state 
Supreme Court justice, and his staff tried to hinder the federal 
investigation or limit its scope.

The full breadth of the documents, however, conflicts with Farmer's 
characterization.

In an Oct. 31, 1997, memo, Alexander Waugh Jr., who then was executive 
assistant attorney general, told Verniero that the Justice Department 
wanted copies of forms signed by minorities who agreed to allow troopers 
patrolling the southern end of the New Jersey Turnpike to search their cars.

Waugh said he didn't think the "consent to search forms" were relevant to 
the federal probe, although they reveal the trooper's initial reason for 
stopping the motorist, providing information that investigators are seeking.

"For this reason, I do not believe we could resist their production," Waugh 
wrote. "However, Deputy Attorney General [George] Rover and I want to go on 
record that we are not consenting to any broadening of the scope of the 
inquiry."

With Verniero's approval, Rover sent a letter to the Justice Department 
objecting to handing over the forms but agreeing to do so.

An April 22, 1997, memo forwarded to Verniero expresses concern with the 
Justice Department's expanding laundry list of information it's seeking.

"While we will continue to address documents and information requests on a 
case-by-case basis, I suggest that we pursue a parallel course of action 
with USDOJ [the U.S. Department of Justice]," wrote Rover, the deputy 
attorney general responsible for providing federal investigators with state 
police data.

Rover then suggested that if troopers were engaging in racial profiling, 
the fault lay with the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, which 
provided troopers with intelligence and training documents "replete with 
references to so-called 'indicators' of drug trafficking, including those 
indicators that focus on the race or ethnic origin of the suspect."

"As a parallel course of action, I believe the attorney general should 
consider reaching out to several other [attorneys general] and write a 
letter or meet with high level DEA and/or justice department officials to 
review the scope and objectives of the present inquiry," Rover wrote.

"Simply put, USDOJ cannot have it both ways; DEA cannot continue to 
encourage the NJSP to aggressively interdict narcotic shipments while at 
the same time subject the NJSP, who are using the DEA's interdiction 
techniques, strategies, and intelligence operations, to a critical inquiry 
based upon nonconclusive statistical data."

Farmer said troopers were to use race as one indicator of who was likely to 
have drugs in their car because federal enforcement agencies were providing 
"intelligence that certain ethnic groups were using the New Jersey Turnpike 
as a pipeline" for "the distribution of these drugs." Farmer said he's 
realized that the description of possible drug couriers was too broad.

The DEA told troopers that ethnic Chinese, West African/Nigerian, 
Pakistani, Indian, and Colombian groups are the largest "visible heroin 
trafficking groups and a major threat in New Jersey at the wholesale drug 
level."

Troopers were given training materials stating that because "blacks value 
material goods, blacks who are not able to purchase their own home put 
money into cars."

"Whether or not there is any reliable sociological research to support this 
assertion, I strongly question its value in the context in which it is 
used," Waugh wrote in a Nov. 21, 1994, memo to the attorney general's 
public relations office.

Waugh sent the memo and attached the training material to alert Becky 
Taylor, then the attorney general's director of communication, of its 
release to lawyers making claims of racial profiling and preparing the 
attorney general for "adverse publicity."

Trenton Correspondents Jeff Pillets, Randy Diamond, and Herb Jackson and 
Staff Writer Paul Johnson contributed to this article.
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