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The New York Times
New Jersey Police Win
Praise
for Efforts to End
Profiling
By DAVID W. CHEN,
nytimes.com on the Web, September 9, 2007
TRENTON, Sept. 5 — Eight years
after New Jersey acknowledged that troopers were focusing on black and Hispanic
drivers at traffic stops, federal monitors said on Wednesday that the New Jersey
State Police had made so much progress in its attempts to eliminate racial
profiling that it no longer needed federal supervision.
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Emile Wamsteker/Bloomberg News
Gov. Jon
S. Corzine said he was encouraged by a report that found great
progress in eliminating racial profiling. |
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The monitors concluded in a report
that in periodic reviews during the past eight years, the police had shown
significant improvement in procedures and training.
In a consent decree signed in 1999, the state agreed to allow the federal
Department of Justice to oversee how traffic stops were conducted, along with
other State Police activities.
Stating that “compliance requirements in all areas are now at 100 percent
levels,” the report said that “it appears the ultimate goal has been attained.”
“Ample evidence exists to suggest that the agency has become self-monitoring and
self-correcting to a degree not often observed in American law enforcement,” the
report added.
Gov. Jon S. Corzine appointed a 21-member committee last year to determine
whether to ask the federal government if the consent decree should be lifted.
This report does not eliminate the federal supervision by itself, so it is up to
the state to file a request with federal officials to have it end.
Although Mr. Corzine said he found the report “very encouraging,” he said he
would wait for his advisory committee to make recommendations.
“Do we have the checks and balances to make sure it stays in place over a longer
period of time?” Mr. Corzine said. “We’re pretty optimistic.”
James E. Johnson, the committee’s chairman and a treasury official in the
Clinton administration who oversaw the Secret Service, said in a telephone
interview that he had not yet seen the report, but that the committee members
would discuss it at a public hearing on Sept. 24. He said that the
committee would submit its findings in about two months.
If federal supervision is waived, New Jersey would be able to formally move
beyond a troubling era in which the delicate topics of race, politics and the
police often collided. And now, given the recent directive on illegal
immigration by Attorney General Anne Milgram that requires all law enforcement
agencies to ask people who are arrested their immigration status, the lessons
learned from racial profiling are more important than ever, said Capt. Al Della
Fave, a spokesman for the State Police.
“We’re very happy once again with the positive findings,” Captain Della Fave
said.
Racial profiling became a major issue in New Jersey after the events of April
23, 1998, when two troopers patrolling the New Jersey Turnpike fired 11 shots
into a van carrying black and Latino men from the Bronx.
The police said that they had stopped the van for speeding and that they fired
when it lurched backward as they approached.
Later, the troopers acknowledged that they had stopped the van because its
occupants were black and Latino. Their supervisors, the troopers said, had
trained them to rely on race and ethnicity, asserting that blacks and Latinos
were more likely to be drug traffickers.
No drugs were found in the vehicle.
The troopers, both white, eventually avoided jail time and probation by pleading
to reduced charges.
But the shooting resonated beyond the state’s borders.
For one thing, it highlighted the frustration of black and Latino drivers who
had complained for years that they were being unfairly and illegally singled out
by police officers because of their skin color.
The case also contributed to a heated national debate about the use of racial
profiling in police work, particularly in drug interdiction, with critics
calling it racist but some law enforcement officials saying it was vital and
effective.
In its recent reports, the independent monitors — Public Management Resources,
of San Antonio, and Lite, DePalma, Greenberg & Rivas, of Newark — faulted the
State Police’s handling of staffing, technology and workload.
But in Wednesday’s report, the monitors praised the police on page after page.
In particular, the monitors praised the police’s use of the Management Awareness
and Personnel Performance System, or Mapps.
“In effect, the New Jersey State Police have taken the Mapps system beyond the
requirements of the consent decree, using it for more than a tracking and
control device for motor vehicle stops, use of force and complaints, and instead
using it to identify systemic organizational issues and to craft solutions to
those issues before they negatively impact the organization in any significant
way,” the report concluded.
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