The following appeared in the January 14, 2001 issue of THE NEW YORK TIMES:
RACIAL MATH ON TURNPIKE
More Stops, Fewer Arrests, and Divided Conclusions
BY IVER PETERSON
TRENTON, Jan. 12 — The argument over racial
profiling by state troopers in New Jersey has become an argument over numbers.
To the lawyers who have leveled charge after
charge of racial profiling on the New Jersey
Turnpike since 1994, the first survey of highway
users and a new breakdown of stop-and-arrest
rates by race are clear proof that troopers are
stopping minorities at a greater rate than before,
even though the number of arrests declined.
But to state officials, the results are inconclusive,
and proof that they need time to collect more
data and install a better reporting system. "You
ask me what does it mean that stops are marginally up and arrests are marginally down, and I
don't have answers to that question," Attorney
General John J. Farmer Jr. said on Wednesday,
when the new statistics were released. "The
whole point of the reform effort is to put into
place a system that will enable us to tell you
what these numbers mean."
Even the Black Ministers Council of New Jersey,
which is leading the drive for new anti-profiling
laws, said it was willing to give the police the
benefit of the doubt, at least until the next set of
numbers comes out this summer.
In April 1999, when state officials stopped denying that state troopers on the turnpike were singling out minority drivers, they agreed to start
releasing periodic summaries of all traffic stops
by state troopers by race and by offense. The
first such report was released last year. The assumption was that any evidence that minorities
were being stopped at rates greater than their
numbers on the highway would be proof of bias,
and the report released on Wednesday, which
included the first look at the racial makeup of
the turnpike's users, seemed to show just that.
According to the figures, blacks accounted for
about 12.5 percent of all motorists on the turnpike but experienced 23.3 percent of all stops
during the six months from May through October last year. Blacks were driving 22 percent of
the vehicles stopped from January through
April, the period covered by the first of the
state's periodic reports.
William H. Buckman, a Moorestown lawyer,
filed one of the first racial profiling lawsuits in
1994 after becoming suspicious over the number
of minority defendants coming to court with
tickets for petty violations. To him, the latest report shows the practice is continuing.
"My review of these materials is that there are
still a very high number of warnings being issued, and that statistic tells me that profiling is
still afoot," Mr. Buckman said. "I mean, the stop
rate of minorities went up, and I think Attorney
General Farmer's comments that they can't tell
anything from these numbers is very telling. For
years they denied it, then they admitted it, and
now they have these numbers, and if the best
they can say is they can't interpret them, I think
reading between the lines, they're saying they
haven't stopped it yet."
The disparity between population and stops
seems to be the greatest on the southern half of
the turnpike, where a decade ago the state police
made headlines with an aggressive campaign
against interstate drug smugglers, and where
the original racial profiling suit against the state
was fought and won by minority drivers.
There, according to the latest report, AfricanAmericans accounted for 15.1 percent of all motorists but for 31.5 percent of all stops from last
May through last October, an increase from 29
percent from January through April.
take a lot more than the almost cosmetic changes
than the attorney general has promised."
The Rev. Reginald T. Jackson, executive director
of the Black Ministers Council, said he was particularly troubled by the apparent increase in the
stop rate for blacks along the turnpike patrolled
by the Moorestown station, which covers the
stretch south of Exit 7. Yet he said his group was
unwilling to leap to conclusions so soon.
For one thing, Mr. Jackson said, the population
survey, which has a wide margin of error, is
based on questionnaires handed out at toll
booths and may not give an accurate picture of
who is using the turnpike.
"I guess part of me wants to find a conclusion
here, but I think we should be cautious," he said.
"You can almost make a report like this say anything you want, and I think we are going to
have to wait until the next report in another six
months."
Ed Lennon, president of the State Troopers Fraternal Association, asserts that it defies common
sense to believe that troopers would increase the
number of racially biased stops after the spotlight was turned on them, particularly now that
nearly every marked patrol car is equipped with
a video camera and microphone to record each
stop.
"Right there on the camera is proof positive for
the reason for every stop," Mr. Lennon said. The
police have long disputed the assumptions that
all races drive similarly and that any disparity in
stop rates indicates some bias.
The arrest figures released on Wednesday
showed that African- Americans were more likely to get moving violations, which are mostly for
speeding, than their numbers would suggest,
but that whites were statistically more likely to
be arrested for drunken driving.
Mr. Buckman, the lawyer, rejects Mr. Lennon's
assertion that troopers do not respond differently to a driver's skin color.
"You're talking about an organization that is
deeply entrenched with the culture of profiling,"
Mr. Buckman said. "Because of its history and
hierarchy and training policies, it is going to
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