TRENTON - Emblez Longoria rarely leaves his house
for fear of being followed. Jennifer Morse
can barely hold a conversation without tearing.
And John Oliva takes medication nightly just to
carry out the simple task of sleeping.
All three used to work for the New Jersey State
Police - Oliva and Longoria as road troopers
and Morse as a civilian employee. All spoke
out against what they believed was improper or
criminal behavior inside the agency at a time
when the state police was battling revelations of
racism, cronyism, sexism and secrecy.
Now, as the agency braces itself for today's confirmation
hearing of superintendent Joseph J.
Santiago, who has promised to usher in an era of
accountability, its critics wonder whether the
state's most elite law enforcement agency will
ever truly be held accountable for its past.
To date, only two troopers accused of firing on
four minority motorists on the New Jersey
Turnpike in 1998 have been punished for wrongdoing,
despite telling authorities that racial
profiling and other abuses were widespread within
state police ranks.
For its part, Gov. McGreevey's administration has
said the agency has made strides in
improving its image, but was clear that the administration
will not tolerate any other
wrongdoing. Santiago has said that, if confirmed,
he intends to hold officers "accountable to
the standards and integrity of the organization."
But neither Santiago nor other members of McGreevey's
administration have said how they
intend to accomplish that.
And the state police has declined to comment.
"The message being sent is that there will be
no justice," the Rev. Reginald Jackson, executive
director of the Black Ministers Council of New
Jersey, a vocal critic of the state police, said in a
recent interview.
It is a particularly difficult message for Oliva, Longoria and Morse.
Their lives have been destroyed, they said. They've
either lost their jobs, or feel they can
never return. They are on medication to ease
their nerves, and they spend their days locked
inside their homes.
All they want, they said, is some semblance of justice,
and have filed suits against the state
police, alleging everything from discrimination
to retaliation - joining roughly three dozen
other state police troopers or civilian employees
to do so.
"I just want to know that what I did was worth it
- that what happened to me will never happen
to anyone else," said Oliva, 34, who filed suit
against the state police last year, alleging
retaliation.
Oliva, a former police officer in the Shore towns
of Pleasantville and Absecon, said it had been
a long-time dream of his to become a state trooper.
He joined the academy in 1998,
graduating first in his class, and went to work
in the state police's Bellmawr station.
His troubles began almost immediately, according to his suit.
Within the first month on the job, his training
coach at the time took him to the same spot
every day: the I-76 ramp in Camden. There, the
two would park in an adjacent grassy area,
headlights trained on the ramp, and stop motorists
based on their race, the suit states.
"If we saw a car that fit the profile, like whites
coming out of inner-city Camden, we would stop
the car immediately, without any probable cause,"
he said. "Then, the probable cause was
made up in the report."
Within his first two weeks of training, Oliva
and his coach wrote tickets on four motorists -
three white men and one white woman - for "failure
to maintain lane," according to the police
reports.
"But it was a lie," Oliva said, when asked about
those reports. "We never even followed them.
We made up the violation to justify the stops."
Oliva said he spoke with his supervisor about his
concerns. When word got out he had
complained, Oliva contends in his suit, his squad
mailbox was vandalized, and he received
threatening notes.
"I became afraid even to go to work," he said.
He filed suit in April 2001. Today, he is out
on stress leave, visits both a psychologist and a
psychiatrist, and takes antidepressants to steady
his nerves.
Meanwhile, his coach has been promoted and is now an instructor at the academy.
"The state police, it's like a cult," said Longoria,
who sued the agency in 1999 for
discrimination. "We've been talking about our
stories for years now. . . . We've been labeled as
disgruntled employees. We're treated like malcontents."
Longoria said he too had always wanted to be a trooper, so in 1988, he joined the academy.
When he graduated, according to the suit, he was
assigned a coach, and was taught to racially
profile. He said he and his coach routinely stopped
minorities, and often heard his superiors
and colleagues make derogatory references to blacks
and Hispanics.
Over the next several years, he was transferred
from one station to another and was twice
passed over for a promotion, according to the suit.
He was reassigned to the turnpike, where
he said he continued to witness racial profiling.
By January 1999, his superiors were trying to transfer
him to a station where he had already
worked and where he said he had encountered racism.
"Enough was enough," said Longoria.
He said he filed suit against the state police
shortly after.
"I just felt I had endured a lot of nonsense for
many years," Longoria, 39, said in a recent
interview. "We [minorities] were treated like animals."
Since filing suit, he said, the mailbox outside
his home has been vandalized three times, and
he has received harassing phone calls.
He said he feels he can't leave his home without
putting himself in danger, and is now on
antianxiety medication, as well as medication for
his stomach, because "my nerves are shot."
"I know my career is over," said Longoria. "But
I know I chose the right path, and I'd do it
again. . . . It's just a bitter pill for me
to swallow that no one has been held accountable."
Jennifer Morse knows that feeling well.
Morse went to work as a secretary in the state police
in 1990, and is now contending in a
lengthy lawsuit that she endured years of sexual
harassment and intimidation by her
immediate supervisor.
As part of her suit, which alleges a hostile work
environment, Morse, 29, contends her
supervisor made inappropriate sexual remarks to
her, touched or pinched her on her arms and
shoulders, and refused to stop even after she complained.
In the suit, filed in 1999, Morse also contends
she was denied a transfer to another office -
despite repeated requests for one - until 1997.
After her transfer, Morse alleges she continued
to be subjected to harassment, and was eventually
fired in September 2000.
For the last three years, she has been in and out
of workers' compensation hearings. The
proceedings, she said, have been stressful - sometimes,
witnesses don't show up. At other
times, neither the prosecutor nor the judge has
shown up, further delaying an outcome.
These days, Morse is taking a battery of antidepressants.
She has been diagnosed as suffering
from panic, depression and anxiety. She has thought
about suicide more than once.
And when she's asked about her past, she cries.
"I just want this to be over," Morse said in an
interview. Yet she acknowledges she doesn't
know what she will do once it all ends - she can't
think that far down the line.
"I just want to show people what the culture of
the state police is," she said. "And I don't want
what happened to me to happen to any other woman."
------
N.J. State Police nominee to face past
By Angela Couloumbis
Inquirer Trenton Bureau
TRENTON - Joseph J. Santiago likes to tout his work
as a reformer, an outsider who has spent
much of his career cleaning up after corruption.
Now, as the nominee to become superintendent of
the New Jersey State Police prepares to face
a confirmation hearing today, the question is:
Will he be able to survive his own questionable
past?
At the hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee,
the 54-year-old former Newark police
director will have to explain a long list of
incidents that are part of his history: A disorderly
persons conviction for beating an off-duty police
officer who had assaulted his fiancee. Another
disorderly persons conviction for using threatening
language toward a subordinate - a
conviction that later was overturned.
Then there is his personal bankruptcy. And the time
he evaded state and federal taxes while
running an unlicensed security company.
They are curious professional attributes for a man
who could be charged with leading the
state's elite law-enforcement agency, which in
recent years has endured wave after wave of
revelations regarding racial profiling, retaliation
and cronyism.
For his part, Santiago - a 32-year veteran of
law enforcement - has said he doesn't want his
personal mistakes to overshadow his professional
successes. He prefers to talk about how, as
Newark's police director, he cut crime by 50
percent; and about how his tough, no-nonsense
style drove out officers who could not - or
would not - work hard.
"I wanted to change the way business was done,"
Santiago said in an interview. "And if I
become the new superintendent, my intention is
to do there what I did in Newark - and that is
change the way business is done."
Asked about his past, Santiago said he intends to provide explanations to the committee today.
"I know there will be issues," he said. "But I hope
they can see beyond that, that they look at
my professional record, and judge me on that."
It is no secret the state police union firmly
believes its new superintendent should be chosen
from within state police ranks. Its members
have expressed concerns about Santiago's past and
are watching closely to see how Santiago will
fare at today's hearing, which will likely be
lengthy - and potentially explosive.
On that front, Gov. McGreevey's administration is
trying to help out as much as possible. On
Friday, it released several letters expressing
support for Santiago from a number of law
enforcement officials and academics.
Among them: William Bratton, New York's former police
commissioner; George L. Kelling, a
professor of criminal justice at Rutgers University
- Newark; Richard Whelan, president of the
New Jersey state lodge of the Fraternal Order of
Police; and John F. Timoney, Philadelphia's
former police commissioner.
.
----------------
March 5, 2002
High Court in New Jersey Strictly Limits Auto Searches
By LAURA MANSNERUS
TRENTON, March 4 — The New Jersey Supreme
Court imposed strict limits today on the consensual
auto searches that have been at the
heart of the furor over racial profiling by the state police.
The ruling, expected to affect police practices throughout
the state, comes after repeated calls by civil
rights advocates and legislators to abolish "consent
searches," in which officers are free to search the
cars of motorists they stop so long as the motorist agrees.
But legislation to limit searches has been
opposed by two governors and has made little progress.
The court held today that before asking a driver's
permission to search, an officer must have "reasonable
and articulable suspicion" of criminal activity —
a standard adopted by only one other state, Hawaii. The
court ruled on the basis of the New Jersey Constitution,
as it often does in civil liberties cases.
While prosecutors have stressed that motorists are given
consent forms to sign before a search, defense
lawyers have expressed doubts that such searches can
be truly consensual.
The decision today means that police officers "can't harass
you and badger you into agreeing to a search,"
said Edward J. Crisonino, the defendant's lawyer in the
case.
Kevin McNulty, who argued the case for the American Civil
Liberties Union of New Jersey, said: "This
isn't one of those criminal law issues that is of interest
just to criminals. It's about how the police are
going to treat people."
The state police have tightened their own rules on consent
searches as part of the federal consent decree
that has governed many of the agency's operations since
evidence of racial profiling became public, and
highly volatile, about three years ago. Most of the
initial accusations of racial profiling stemmed from
cases in which defendants sought to suppress evidence
gathered in consent searches.
The federal consent decree requires a trooper to "articulate
a reasonable suspicion" before ordering a
consent search, said Roger Shatzkin, a spokesman for
the attorney general's office, and since last summer
the agency also requires a supervisor's permission.
The prosecutors argued to the Supreme Court, however,
that the restrictions should take the form of
agency policy, and were not constitutionally required.
The New Jersey State Association of Chiefs of
Police had also opposed restrictions on consent searches;
the executive director, Mitchell Sklar, said
today that the organization was still reviewing the court's
decision.
The defendant in the case, Steven J. Carty, was a passenger
in a car stopped on the New Jersey Turnpike
in March 1997. A search found cocaine in Mr. Carty's
possession. The trial court in Camden County,
after hearing prosecutors argue that Mr. Carty and the
driver were acting nervous, found the search
justifiable and refused to exclude the evidence. Mr.
Carty spent nearly two years in prison before the
appellate division overturned the ruling.
Today's decision upheld the appellate court's finding
in a 5-to-0 vote. Two justices, Peter G. Verniero
and Jaynee LaVecchia, who had been officials in the attorney
general's office, recused themselves. The
decision was written by Justice James Coleman.
Justice Coleman's opinion cited findings that 95 percent
of motorists consent to requests for searches
when their cars are stopped, adding that "where the
individual is at the side of the road and confronted by
a uniformed officer, it is not a stretch of the imagination
to assume that the individual feels compelled to
consent."
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Compan