Pubdate: Wed, 22 Dec 1999
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 1999 The New York Times Company
Contact:  http://www.nytimes.com/
Forum: http://www10.nytimes.com/comment/
Author: David Kocieniewski

U.S. WILL MONITOR NEW JERSEY POLICE ON RACE PROFILING

TRENTON, Dec. 22 -- Citing extensive evidence that New Jersey State
Police officers have discriminated against minority motorists, the
Justice Department announced today that it would appoint an outside
monitor to oversee the police agency and to ensure that it enacts
policy changes.

The monitor, who will report directly to a federal judge, will have
broad powers to inspect virtually any function of officers and their
supervisors, but will specifically order them to keep records of
arrests and traffic stops by race to make sure that minorities are not
being singled out.

The monitor will also be charged with following through on the Justice
Department's recommendations that New Jersey overhaul the Police
Department's secretive internal affairs system, which many civil
rights advocates and former troopers said was used to protect abusive
and bigoted officers.

The state would face contempt of court charges if it failed to
comply.

The outside oversight, which was announced as part of a legal
agreement between the Justice Department's civil rights division and
the state, is the first time federal officials have installed a
monitor to supervise a police agency specifically because of evidence
that officers were focusing on members of minorities during traffic
stops.

Two other law enforcement agencies, the Police Departments in
Pittsburgh and in Steubenville, Ohio, have also reached settlements
with the Justice Department to resolve accusations that their officers
engaged in misconduct.

The appointment of a monitor was also a political rebuke to Gov.
Christine Todd Whitman, who denied that there was any pattern of
discrimination by troopers until April, nearly three years after a
state judge in Gloucester County ruled that there was compelling
evidence of widespread use of the practice, known as racial profiling.

The governor did not attend the joint news conference with Justice
Department officials, and in a written statement she said she was
gratified that the federal government had endorsed many of the same
changes the state attorney general proposed earlier this year.

But Justice Department investigators, who spoke only on the condition
of anonymity, said that they found the discrimination to be more
serious and widely accepted by officers and supervisors than the state
attorney general's office had acknowledged in its report.

Bill Lann Lee, acting assistant attorney general for civil rights,
would not characterize the specific findings of the Justice
Department's three-year investigation. Mr. Lee said, however, that the
agreement with the state and the appointment of the outside monitor
would end the inattentive supervision, training and disciplinary
practices that the Justice Department said allowed some officers to
single out black and Hispanic motorists with impunity.

"This agreement will establish real safeguards against racially
discriminatory stops and searches for motorists who drive on New
Jersey highways," Mr. Lee said.

By entering the agreement, called a consent decree, with New Jersey
officials, the Justice Department will drop its threat to file a civil
lawsuit against the state for failing to protect the rights of
minority motorists.

Under the agreement signed today, troopers are forbidden to use race
as a factor in traffic stops or in decisions to conduct a search
except when they are pursuing a specific criminal suspect and have a
detailed description.

Troopers will also be required to document the race, gender and
ethnicity of all drivers who are stopped, and state police supervisors
and the federal monitor will review officers' activities on a computer
database.

The state police, an agency so independent that it has often refused
to provide information to lawmakers and other state officials, have
also agreed to issue public reports twice a year and to provide a
breakdown of arrests and traffic stops by race.

Carson J. Dunbar Jr., who was appointed superintendent of the
2,700-member police force after his predecessor, Col. Carl A.
Williams, was dismissed for making racially insensitive comments, said
that the new policies would provide a road map for supervisors trying
to improve the force.

The state attorney general, John J. Farmer Jr., said that the intense
scrutiny from both state officials and the federal monitor would
provide a strong deterrent to any officer inclined to
discriminate.

The Justice Department began to examine the department in 1996, when a
judge in Gloucester County found evidence of discrimination by state
troopers after hearing that black drivers on the New Jersey Turnpike
were five times more likely than whites to be stopped.

The federal inquiry intensified in April 1998, when officers shot
three unarmed minority men during a traffic stop on the turnpike, and
racial profiling instantly became a dominant political issue in New
Jersey and the most troubling crisis of Governor Whitman's tenure.

Steven H. Rosenbaum, who led the Justice Department investigation,
said that federal authorities found "extensive problems" in the
tactics used by some officers and their supervisors' failure to
address discrimination complaints.

The monitor will oversee sweeping changes in the state police internal
affairs office, which has been long been accused of cronyism and
cover-up. Mr. Rosenbaum said that in other police departments under
federal supervision, the monitors review internal affairs cases and
can demand a reinvestigation if the findings appear dubious.

If the state police balk at any of the monitor's requests, Justice
Department officials can ask a federal judge to find the department in
contempt of court for violating the decree. But Mr. Lee said that the
Whitman administration had cooperated in the investigation and that he
hoped to use the proposed changes as a model for other law enforcement
agencies accused of selective enforcement and racial
discrimination.

Civil rights leaders in New Jersey were relieved that the Justice
Department insisted on outside oversight. Although Governor Whitman
dismissed the former police superintendent in February and has since
installed several layers of supervision within the attorney general's
office, many black and Hispanic leaders feared that the state might
not follow through on its plans to revamp the force.

"We think the consent decree is tough and can ensure that the state
helps to end racial profiling and discrimination," said the Rev.
Reginald T. Jackson, director of the Black Ministers Council of New
Jersey. "The facts speak for themselves. You have a new
superintendent, a new attorney general and a new assistant attorney
general. But the Justice Department recognizes that we need someone
else to watch them because they were so slow to respond in the first
place."
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