Troopers Are Accused of Stopping Drivers Based on Race
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While the State Police maintain that troopers do not stop cars on the New Jersey Turnpike and search for drugs based on the skin color of motorists, the Public Defender’s office here says that evidence to the contrary walks into court in handcuffs all the time. The volatile assertion that black and Hispanic drivers are singled out by troopers is the subject of a hearing here in the case of 19 men and women, all black or Hispanic, who were stopped on the turnpike and arrested from 1988 through 1991. Jeffrey Wintner, the Gloucester County Public Defender, is seeking to suppress evidence seized during those arrests. But he contends that the issue is broader than these 19 cases. “What we are dealing with here are not just blacks who are arrested but the large numbers of blacks who are stopped, searched and hassled,” Mr. Wintner said. “Or just frightened to death,” added Carrie D. Dingle, an assistant public defender. Two former state troopers, both black, testified that they were taught to use racial profiles to stop turnpike drivers and pressure them to let their cars be searched. Mr. Wintner has also produced experts and surveys of turnpike traffic in southern New Jersey, where the turnpike cuts across farmlands and orchards on the way to the Delaware Memorial Bridge, to argue that race had to influence the selection of cars that state troopers decided to stop. “Our figures show that 73 percent of the arrests made by the state police at this end of the turnpike were blacks,” he said during a break in the proceedings, which began Nov. 30. “Forty-six percent of all investigative stops, according to the state police, involved blacks.” These figures compare with surveys showing that black occupants make up 13.5 per cent of all turnpike traffic, he said. John Hagerty, a state police spokesman, said in a telephone interview this week that his agency denied the existence of racial profiling and that it was a national leader in carrying out racial and ethnic sensitivity programs for recruits and veterans on the force. “The smokescreen of profiling has been used by defense attorneys in an attempt to get criminal charges dropped,” Mr. Hagerty said. “It must be remembered that the defendants in all these cases face serious charges of drug possession, weapons transportation and other illegal contraband as well as motor vehicle violations.” He said attempts to suppress evidence on similar complaints had been rejected by the courts in Middlesex and Warren Counties. Moreover, he said, the two former troopers who testified in the current Gloucester County hearing were dropped from the force because of problems with their work and “had axes to grind.” Mr. Wintner, the Public Defender, said previous attempts to suppress evidence based on allegations that the police zeroed in on blacks for drug searches did not progress to a full evidentiary hearing like the one under way in Gloucester County. “There has not been as comprehensive a study as the one we are presenting,” he said. The defense is expected to complete arguments this week before Judge Robert E. Francis of Superior Court on the motion to suppress evidence seized from the suspects’ cars. The state will then present its case to preserve the evidence; a ruling may not be made until after Jan. 1, both sides said. All but one of the 19 cases involved illegal drug possession; the 19th involved a weapons charge. In the high-vaulted main courtroom of Superior Court here, the defense has introduced traffic flow charts, copies of police arrest records and affidavits submitted by researchers who counted cars whizzing by on the nearby turnpike. But it was the appearance of the two former state troopers that created the most interest, and controversy, in the proceedings. One, Kenneth Wilson, 30, testified he had been coached by superiors in “trickery” during patrols in a State Police cruiser to stop young black men driving cars with out-of-state plates and get them to consent to a search of their vehicles. More : query.nytimes.com |