N.J. State Police
require permanent,
independent oversight
to end its’ racial profiling
BY WILLIAM H. BUCKMAN
and DEBORAH JACOBS
The Times (nj.com)
from the Web, March 17, 2007
NEWARK, NJ, Mar. 15 -- Gov.
Jon Corzine recently appointed an Advisory Committee on Police Standards to
examine police practices statewide, with the central task of determining whether
the state police should be released from the federal monitoring imposed on it
for its role in racial profiling of motorists.
Until the state police are stripped of their ability to hide their abuses, and
are provided with strong, independent and permanent oversight, we oppose any
lessening of outside scrutiny. The culture of the state police supports a
system that has robbed minorities of their dignity and security. Profiling
strikes fear in minority motorists, and it continues to this day.
Yet even after the practice was proven in court, the state police and previous
attorneys general and governors ignored or denied it. When he was in the
U.S. Senate, Corzine sponsored the End Racial Profiling Act of 2004. In
proposing the law, Corzine was well aware that while racial profiling may not
have originated in New Jersey, our state has the dubious distinction of having
honed it into a fine art.
Unfortunately, even in light of New Jersey's record, the Advisory Committee on
Police Standards has received few resources to truly study the extent of the
profiling problem. The governor gave the committee no subpoena power with
which to require the state police, the attorney general and other state agencies
to produce witnesses and information.
Subpoena power would perhaps help the committee discover even more problems,
such as those revealed by State Police Sgt. Scott Turner, who worked with
federal monitors and told the committee that the state police had hidden or
manipulated data meant for the monitors.
The panel also received a disturbing confidential report, originally leaked in
2003, on the state police by the Rutgers-Newark School of Criminal Justice.
Commissioned by former Attorney General John J. Farmer Jr. and kept from the
public, the report refers to nine other confidential reports on the state police
conducted between 1996 and 2001 -- none flattering to the agency and none re
leased to the public.
Even excluding the alleged lying and hiding of information by state police
personnel, the state's own Turnpike-stop statistics demonstrate ongoing
discrimination. After six years under the federal consent decree, the
rates at which minorities are stopped at the southern end of the New Jersey
Turnpike are about the same as they were in 1996, when the state Superior Court
ruled that the practice existed.
A 2005 study commissioned by the American Civil Liberties Union and provided to
the committee demonstrates that profiling persists on the Turnpike's southern
end. The study relied on the state's own raw data, which showed in 1999,
when New Jersey's highest government officials first acknowledged that the state
police engaged in racial profiling, that African Americans made up 28.7 percent
of all stops on the southern portion of the Turnpike. When the first
federal monitor's report was issued in 2000, African Americans represented 29
percent of southern turnpike stops. In 2004, it was 30.1 percent. By
April 2005, this number climbed to 30.8 percent of southern Turnpike stops even
though the overall percentage of African American drivers there is 18.5 percent.
These numbers become starker when compared with those on the northern portion of
the Turnpike. While African Americans consistently made up about 30
percent of all stops on the southern portion of the Turnpike (the Moorestown
barracks), they comprise only about 18 percent of all stops on the northern
portion of the Turnpike (the Newark barracks), a percentage that is more in line
with the actual percentage of African-American drivers on the Turnpike.
It should come as no surprise that New Jersey cannot eradicate a culture of
racially based policing with only a short period of federal monitoring (possibly
impeded by cooked books, as noted by Sgt. Turner's aforementioned testimony).
Change cannot come without some kind of permanent, independent oversight.
In 2003, four years into the consent decree, the Rutgers report found that
despite the federal oversight, the state police were still in the throes of a
dysfunctional culture that led to profiling, other citizen abuse and
mistreatment of conscientious troopers who tried to blow the whistle on
improprieties.
After decades wherein the state police hierarchy, attorneys general, the
Legislature and governors failed to provide adequate supervision, it's time for
a new approach.
Other states have long employed working models of supervision that the committee
should study, including offices for police oversight, civilian review boards,
external auditors and licensing of police.
Whichever models are used, the office responsible for the oversight must have
resources, independence and authority to do its job. It's time for the
committee and the governor to take a strong stand in guaranteeing equal
treatment of all New Jerseyans.
William H. Buckman, a Moorestown criminal defense and civil
rights attorney, has represented police whistleblowers and sued the state police
for racial profiling. Deborah Jacobs is executive director of the American
Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey.
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