Pubdate: Sun, 7 March 1999
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer (PA)
Copyright: 1999 Philadelphia Newspapers Inc.
Contact:  http://www.phillynews.com/
Forum: http://interactive.phillynews.com/talk-show/
Author: Douglas A. Campbell and Howard Goodman INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS

THE PATH TO GLORY FOR N.J. TROOPERS: ARRESTS, ARRESTS

Waging a war on drug traffickers, the state police have lost sight of public
safety, some troopers and others say.

The seizure of 99 kilograms of cocaine was Trooper Raymond Lasso's route to
stardom. For Trooper Darryl Albonico, it was arresting 40 people and seizing
358 pounds of marijuana and 622 pounds of cocaine -- a haul estimated at
more than $30 million.

For a rising star in the New Jersey State Police, the surest way to become
"trooper of the year" has been to make more drug arrests and seize more
contraband than anyone else. In 31 years, the award has gone 19 times to
troopers who have chalked up huge numbers of drug seizures or arrests.

The message to the department's 2,600 troopers is clear: It's nice to help
stranded motorists, write traffic tickets, and investigate accidents, but to
really shine, rack up the arrest numbers.

In recent weeks, several troopers have declared that the force has been all
too willing to trample on individual rights in its zeal to make arrests.

Their accusations have reignited long-standing complaints of myriad
civil-rights abuses, among them the use of racial profiling in stopping
motorists. The complaints have been heard for 30 years -- from hippies and
minority motorists, from minority troopers, even from white male troopers.

The complaints describe an outfit that is insular, intolerant of criticism,
and hostile toward outsiders.

Eight days ago, the state police superintendent, Col. Carl Williams, was
fired by Gov. Whitman for connecting some racial and ethnic groups with the
sales of certain drugs.

"The thing that hits you between the eyes about the New Jersey State Police
is the secrecy, the military secrecy, the us-versus-them attitude," says
William Buckman, a Moorestown lawyer who successfully challenged the state
police over racial profiling. "That's not an attitude that serves the public
very well in a democracy."

The state police consistently have denied that they practice racial
profiling. Williams frequently repeated that any trooper found violating a
motorist's rights would be severely disciplined, although he refused to
release data on any such discipline on the grounds of confidentiality.

State police spokesman John R. Hagerty on Friday afternoon refused to
comment on the criticisms, saying The Inquirer had afforded him insufficient
time to respond.

Judicial opinions, legal documents, and complaints from individual motorists
tell a story of a police department with a long history of controversy:

A 1970 suit by the American Civil Liberties Union charging profiling against
men with long hair and beards.

A 1975 federal order requiring the state police to hire more minorities and
women.

A 1993 Equal Employment Opportunities Commission complaint from several
black troopers charging discrimination in promotions and retaliation.

A 1996 ruling by a Gloucester County Superior Court judge that troopers
conducted racial profiling on the New Jersey Turnpike.

A 1998 verdict in federal court that the state police discriminated and
retaliated against a minority trooper.

A 1999 suit by a trooper claiming that he was required to engage in racial
profiling on the turnpike.

Together, these complaints paint one picture of the culture within the state
police -- an organization formed 71 years ago on the model of the U.S.
military with a mission to serve a mainly rural populace. To a large extent,
"The Outfit," as it calls itself, has never shed its sense of elitism. It's
a picture with interlocking pieces dealing with the way the state police
treat the public, their practices in dealing with their own, and the manner
in which they pursue drugs.

The piece that ties it all together is the war on drugs.

In the late 1980s, the Drug Enforcement Administration launched "Operation
Pipeline," a nationwide program to encourage state police to use their
powers of traffic enforcement to intercept the flow of drugs.

According to James Fyfe, a Temple University criminologist, few departments
embraced the mission as enthusiastically as the New Jersey State Police did.

Interstate 95 stretches 1,850 miles from Maine to Florida. Yet it was New
Jersey, with just 125 miles of I-95 crossing its heart, that "racked up the
most drug arrests," Fyfe said.

The New Jersey State Police played a key role in making training videos for
other states taking part in the program, said Buckman, the lawyer in the
1996 case in which Gloucester County Judge Robert E. Francis ruled that the
state police conducted racial profiling. Buckman's legal team obtained a
copy of the version of the video used in New Mexico -- after state officials
repeatedly denied that such training videos existed.

Buckman and other lawyers for plaintiffs in the lawsuit produced the video
at trial. "And all of a sudden the state police reconstructed their memory:
"'Oh, yeah, we did make a few tapes,"' Buckman said in an interview.

"In the opening credits, it tells you that these are techniques developed by
the DEA and the New Jersey State Police," Buckman said. The Jersey troopers
were credited nationally with "devising and being at the forefront of these
highway drug interdiction techniques," Buckman said.

In the video, nearly every suspect arrested is Hispanic or black. Lists of
drug seizures and the nationalities of the arrestees are shown.

Francis ruled that the training film was racially oriented.

Under Operation Pipeline, troopers were taught how to persuade motorists
stopped for traffic infractions to allow their cars to be searched -- as
Fyfe, a former New York City police officer, put it: "to wheedle consent out
of traffic stops."

Fyfe testified as an expert witness for minority motorists in the Gloucester
County case.

In defending that case, state police officials repeatedly asserted that they
kept no records of car stops on the New Jersey Turnpike, unlike police in
other states such as Ohio and Maryland.

They also maintained in court that they kept no records of the training
given to officers for Operation Pipeline.

Fyfe -- who taught for six years at the New York City Police Academy and who
says he has studied the records of "hundreds and hundreds" of police
academies as an expert witness in many civil rights cases involving police
forces -- says that's hard to believe.

"Every police department keeps, in great detail, records of their
curriculum," he said.

The police attitude was summed up by former Superintendent Clinton Pagano
after a New York television station in 1989 aired a scathing series of
reports on racial profiling on the turnpike.

Pagano said that violating motorists' rights was "of serious concern," but
"nowhere near the concern that I think we have got to look to in trying to
correct some of the problems we find with the criminal element in this
state."

>From the outside, it is difficult to assess the racial bias, or lack of it,
inside an organization as large as the state police, especially based on a
limited number of complaints. Until 1998, the state police had successfully
defended themselves in court against charges of internal racial bias. Last
year, a trooper for the first time successfully sued, charging a pattern of
discrimination and retaliation. At present, 16 troopers have complaints of
discrimination or harassment pending. The seventeen cases provide a limited
picture, but the picture is vivid.

It was the 1993 Equal Employment Opportunities Commission complaint and a
subsequent suit brought by 13 black troopers that opened a window for the
public on racial relations within the force. In that complaint, black
troopers told how they were subjected to retaliation when they complained
that they were denied promotions.

They elaborated on their complaints in a suit filed against the state police
in 1997.

Trooper Samuel Davis Jr., for example, told of lockers broken into, badges
stolen, uniforms soiled, and a car vandalized. He alleged that at times,
some white officers refused to back him up.

He said that although he received "consistently satisfactory performance
evaluations," he was disciplined twice after he joined the EEOC complaint
and was suspended for five days for an infraction for which he later was
exonerated.

Trooper Darryl Beard was suspended for 20 days on insubordination charges
and failure to follow an order after he was identified by his superiors as a
"radical," the suit alleges. Later, when he complained about racial
profiling by the state police, he was transferred 53 miles from his home.
All along, he was denied special assignments, in most cases passed by white
officers with fewer qualifications, the suit says.

Renee Steinhagen, a lawyer for the African American troopers, said last week
that the state police suffers from being accountable to no one. Although the
department is under the jurisdiction of the attorney general, she said: "The
Attorney General's Office, whenever the little boys get in trouble, goes out
of its way to defend [ them ] . It allows these men to act on their
individual prejudices."

A string of other suits by individual troopers alleges repeated patterns of
retaliation against troopers who press for changes.

Trooper Vincent Bellaran, who is of Filipino, Puerto Rican, and Irish
ancestry, told in the federal discrimination suit he won in 1998 of being
suspended after he accused a supervisor of racism. Before he was sent home,
he was forced to strip to his underwear and surrender his uniform, badge and
gun.

The federal judge in his case upheld all his claims, including several
incidents of retaliation when he continued to object to his treatment.
Trooper Vincent Longoria, in a suit filed Feb. 4 in federal court, alleged
that he suffered retaliation for being Bellaran's friend after Bellaran won
his suit. And he said that in early 1998, he was required, during duty on
the turnpike, to participate in acts of racial profiling.

Trooper Charles Bianco, who is white, said in a suit filed in January in
Mercer County Superior Court that he was subjected to retaliation in 1996
when he complained about another trooper being drunk on duty. Bianco claimed
that a superior officer, who was a friend of the drunk trooper, punished
Bianco with poor-performance notices and blocked his promotion to sergeant.

Philip J. Moran, who represents Bellaran, Longoria and Bianco, summed up the
state police culture this way:

"The state police pride themselves on being [ a paramilitary ] organization.
Unfortunately, the final implication in practice of that organization is
that the New Jersey State Police act like a bunch of half-baked Montana
militiamen."

The history of the state police is filled with heroic actions of individual
troopers, offering assistance to motorists, saving lives during accidents,
or battling dangerous criminals in shoot-outs.

"When I was a trooper on the road, I felt part of our job was to provide a
safe environment for the public," said former trooper Michael McLaughlin,
who is now Camden County sheriff. "I wasn't out there for the express
purpose to interdict drugs.

"Maybe the message got confused here somewhere," McLaughlin said. "I don't
think trying to achieve trooper of the year should be the only goal. Maybe
in some people's minds it became the goal."

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