The development was hailed by defenders of democratic rights and denounced by the police brass and their supporters.

Following the release of 91,000 pages of documents last November confirming the use of "profiling"--the long-term practice of stopping drivers simply because they are Black or Latino--many arrested following such searches had demanded that charges against them be dropped. Seventy-seven of 94 such cases have now been thrown out, Attorney General John Farmer announced February 2.

Farmer announced the same day that the state had also agreed to pay $12.95 million to settle a civil case brought by four basketball players--three Black and one Latino--whose van was fired on by two white troopers in a notorious incident on the New Jersey Turnpike in April 1998. The settlement, the largest in state history, was the second around the issue of profiling.

At the end of December the state agreed to pay $340,000 to a New York taxi driver arrested after state cops claimed to have found drugs in the back seat of his vehicle. José Báez, who was eventually cleared of all charges, had spent 18 days in jail because the trooper who made the arrest failed to note in court papers that he was a cab driver whose passenger had fled.

The reluctance of state officials to throw out charges based on illegal evidence, despite nationwide coverage of the racist practices of highway police here, was demonstrated when Farmer labeled defendants in the dismissed cases as "criminals" who had escaped on a technicality.

"Let us be clear," Farmer said, "the defendants in these cases may have prevailed in their motions to suppress [evidence], but they are criminals nonetheless. All were carrying some form of contraband," he claimed. "It is, accordingly, impossible to view them as victims."

Edward Lennon, president of the State Troopers Fraternal Association of New Jersey, called the dismissal of charges against 128 defendants "reprehensible." "Troopers are out there doing their jobs, and now these arrests are thrown out en masse? I don't think that serves the public at all."

Two weeks earlier, on January 20, 600 cops and their supporters attended a rally in Woodbridge, a suburb south of here, in defense of the two troopers--John Hogan and James Kenna--who face criminal charges in the 1998 Turnpike shooting. Speakers included rightist radio personality Bob Grant, who, according to an account of the rally in the local press, "dismissed the controversy over racial profiling as nonsense."

A standing ovation was given to Carl Williams, the former superintendent of the state police who was fired in 1999 after he made the statement that in a question of drugs "it's most likely a minority group that's involved." The rally was sponsored by the ultraright outfit Americop, headed by a sergeant on the police force of the northern suburb of Nutley.

In another indication of the attitude among police brass, a supervisor nominated Hogan for "Trooper of the Year" shortly after the Turnpike shooting. "He is among the best the New Jersey State Police have to offer," the recommendation said.

Hearings in the state legislature on profiling are scheduled for March and a class-action suit is being prepared on behalf of all victims of it.

"We estimate 100,000 to 175,000 people of color were stopped on the Turnpike, and in some cases searched," says attorney Neil Mullin, who filed initial papers in the class action suit in 1998. The suit, rejected by the state superior court, is currently before the state supreme court.
 
 
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