NEW JERSEY:
Police Base Racial Stops on Federal Crime Stats
Last Updated April 22, 2001

          The New York Times reports that drug crime info published by the U.S. Drug Enforcment Administration strongly suggests that certain racial and ethnic groups are responsible for the bulk of drug crimes.

          This fact is being used by New Jersey officials in defending themselves against ongoing charges of racial profiling.

          Federal crime statistics clearly illustrate that the majority of drug couriers, distributors, and street-level dealers fit a specific racial profile. See especially tables 40 and 46 at link:
http://www.adversity.net/fed_stats/DOJ_Crime_Stats/DOJ_1998_crime_stats.pdf

          The New York Times writes: "In 1986, the Drug Enforcement Administration's Operation Pipeline enlisted police departments across the country to search for narcotics traffickers on major highways and told officers, to cite one example, that Latinos and West Indians dominated the drug trade and therefore warranted extra scrutiny.

          "Since then, the D.E.A. and the Department of Transportation have financed and taught an array of drug interdiction programs that emphasize the ethnic and racial characteristics of narcotics organizations and teach the police ways to single out cars and drivers who are smuggling.

          "Among the characteristics officers in Operation Pipeline have been trained to look for: people with dreadlocks and cars with two Latino males traveling together.

          "Federal officials contend that they have never taught profiling and that police departments that use racially discriminatory tactics are misapplying the D.E.A.'s intelligence reports. Federal officials have taken several steps in recent years intended to measure the problem, most notably President Clinton's 1999 executive order that any police force that receives federal money for drug interdiction must keep track of the race of anyone stopped, searched or arrested by officers.

          "... in May 1998, as the Department of Justice was investigating whether the New Jersey State Police needed a federal monitor to oversee its efforts to deter profiling, Anthony J. Senneca, agent in charge of the D.E.A.'s Newark office, wrote to state police officials to praise the troopers' methods and effectiveness on the turnpike.

          "The letter singled out the exemplary work of five troopers, including John Hogan, who one month earlier was involved in the April 1998 shootings of three unarmed minority men on the New Jersey Turnpike, an incident that propelled racial profiling onto the nation's political agenda.

          "Few in law enforcement foresaw such an outcome in 1986, when Operation Pipeline began as a way to use municipal police departments as an aggressive force in the national crusade against drugs. The program, which has been used to train more than 25,000 officers in 48 states, offered the police access to Drug Enforcement Administration intelligence reports, which included detailed descriptions of ethnic drug gangs and the cartels.

          "Drug Enforcement Administration officials emphatically dispute the notion that they taught or encouraged unequal enforcement of the law.

          "Nonetheless, much of the Drug Enforcement Administration's emphasis on the race and ethnicity of drug traffickers endures. During the last five years, the D.E.A. has stopped distributing training videos in which all the drug suspects have Spanish surnames. But just last year, the agency's Newark office released the "Heroin Trends" report, which noted:

          "Meanwhile, federal agencies like the Department of Transportation have also sponsored drug interdiction programs that make similar observations. And a 1998 report by Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, stunned New Jersey officials because it gave detailed breakdowns of the ethnic and racial backgrounds of sellers, traffickers and users alike.

          "Hugh B. Price, president and chief executive of the National Urban League, said today that he hoped that the public attention focused on New Jersey's racial profiling would induce the federal government to address the causes of racial profiling as well as the symptoms, even if part of the blame lay within the Justice Department itself.

          "These are federal civil rights that are at risk and are undermined, and we want the federal government to put force on this issue," Mr. Price said.  [[ PERSPECTIVE: Don’t forget that Mr. Hugh Price is the same man who, in 1997, said that white NJ school teacher Sharon Taxman deserved to be fired solely because she was white, in order that a black teacher could retain her job and thereby increase the "diversity" of the NJ school.   At that time, Hugh Price attempted to diminish the racially discriminatory nature of the NJ school board’s decision when he said "This was a case that involved just one job, two people, with the outcome decided solely on race."  Thus, Hugh Price and the National Urban League reveal their racially-biased, anti-white philosophy.  See Taxman at link:  http://www.adversity.net/njteach.htm#xxpara3 ]]

(Based upon the New York Times story 11/29/00 by David Kocieniewski)

[link http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/29/nyregion/29FEDS.html ]

Also: Download Official Department of Justice Crime Stats (PDF format). See especially tables 40 and 46.
[Download from:  http://www.adversity.net/DOJ Crime Stats/DOJ_1998_crime_stats.pdf ]

End Police Fire NEW JERSEY PROFILING