Pubdate: Tue, 15 Jan 2002
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2002 The New York Times Company
Contact:  http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Section: New York Region
Author: Laura Mansnerus

THE WOUNDS LINGER, ON BOTH SIDES

TRENTON, Jan. 14 — As they do their best to slip out of the public gaze, 
James Kenna and John Hogan will be among the last in New Jersey's 
racial-profiling drama to try to leave it behind.

The four young black and Latino men who were stopped and fired upon by 
Troopers Kenna and Hogan one night almost four years ago are leading lives 
as ordinary as possible, their lawyers say. The superintendent of the state 
police at the time lost his job and has largely faded from view. The state 
attorney general whose office oversaw the police at the time is working 
quietly as a State Supreme Court justice, having narrowly escaped 
impeachment over the issue last year.

But the lawyers carry on. In a ruling last week that allowed a class action 
to proceed against state officials accused of condoning racial 
discrimination by the state police, a federal district court judge noted, 
"There is a vast body of racial profiling litigation ongoing in the state 
of New Jersey."

"This is a cancer that just keeps growing," William Buckman, a lawyer who 
worked on the first case, in which a New Jersey judge found that the police 
had systematically discriminated against minorities in stops on the New 
Jersey Turnpike. "It's not going to go away until the state of New Jersey 
admits responsibility for the practice."

When Troopers Kenna and Hogan entered their guilty pleas this morning to 
misdemeanor charges in the turnpike shootings, Jarmaine Grant, 26, and 
Danny Reyes, 24, the two young men most seriously injured by the troopers, 
were on a visit to Puerto Rico to see some of Mr. Reyes's relatives.

"It's all very complicated emotionally for them," said Peter Neufeld, the 
lawyer who represented them in a civil suit that was settled 11 months ago 
for nearly $13 million. "Remember, both still have bullets in them."

Both young men live in Manhattan, Mr. Neufeld said — Mr. Grant with his 
wife and small daughter and Mr. Reyes on his own. He said Mr. Grant was so 
impressed with his physical therapists that he took courses himself and 
started working as a rehabilitation therapist.

The driver of the van, Keshon Moore, 26, is also a father now. His lawyer, 
Linda B. Kenney, said Mr. Moore was living in Virginia and working two jobs.

The fourth victim, Rayshawn Brown, is a junior at Bloomfield College in New 
Jersey. Mr. Brown, 23, is on the school's basketball team despite the 
paralysis of two fingers of his right hand, and is working toward a degree 
in computer science, said his lawyer, Wayne Greenfeder.

The state's settlement with the four men came just a month before a ritual 
apportionment of blame in hearings before the State Senate Judiciary 
Committee. The hearings culminated in demands, even from fellow 
Republicans, for the impeachment of Justice Peter G. Verniero, who as 
attorney general in the late 1990's received data on racial profiling but 
did not acknowledge the practice until a year after the turnpike shootings. 
The matter never came to a vote in the legislature, however.

Most of Mr. Verniero's subordinates also weathered disclosures that they 
had turned aside evidence of racial profiling. But the state police 
superintendent, Carl A. Williams, was dismissed by Gov. Christie Whitman in 
February 1999 when he said in a newspaper interview that minorities were 
largely to blame for drug trafficking.

Mr. Williams left public life then, although last month he appeared at a 
breakfast with the Rev. Reginald T. Jackson, a leader of the campaign 
against racial profiling.

Mr. Williams's successor, Col. Carson J. Dunbar Jr., also plans to leave 
government, after an unremarkable but difficult tenure, when he steps down 
Jan. 31.

Another career detoured was that of David Blaker, who acknowledged in State 
Senate hearings that as a state police official he had seen but failed to 
act on evidence of continuing racial profiling.

Mr. Blaker had been appointed acting prosecutor in Cape May County, but his 
name was withdrawn after Democrats said they would question his record on 
the issue. (Mr. Blaker has since been named to the State Parole Board.)

Several state officials, including Justice Verniero and Mr. Williams, are 
still defendants in lawsuits. Mr. Buckman said that he continues to 
represent minority defendants in criminal cases brought after stops on the 
turnpike.

His first such cases went to trial in 1994, among 17 heard together in a 
South Jersey courtroom before Judge Robert E. Francis of State Superior 
Court. In 1996, Judge Francis, who is still on the bench in Gloucester 
County, issued the ruling that found "at least a de facto policy" by 
troopers of singling out minority drivers on the southern portion of the 
turnpike.

The attorney general's office, led by Deborah T. Poritz and then by Mr. 
Verniero, did not drop its appeal until April 1999. Last February their 
successor, John J. Farmer Jr., dismissed 128 criminal cases in which 
defendants sought to suppress evidence from highway searches that they said 
were racially motivated. In doing so, Mr. Farmer protested that although 
the defendants prevailed, "they are criminals nonetheless."

Mr. Farmer added that New Jersey officials had "subjected ourselves to 
levels of scrutiny and criticism unheard of in the rest of this nation."
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