Headnote:

 Incidents in New Jersey and Maryland heat up the issue of racial profiling by state highway patrols

 LET ME MAKE THIS VERY CLEAR," ANnounced Maryland's chief state trooper, Colonel David Mitchell, to a
 group of reporters last week. "The Maryland state police has not, does not, nor will it ever condone the use of
 race-based profiling" in stopping cars on highways.

 Yeah, sure, responded skeptical African Americans, from U.S. Congressmen to manual laborers.

 Mitchell was responding to a federal lawsuit filed last week by 11 black motorists and backed by the American
 Civil Liberties Union and the Maryland N.A.A.C.P. The suit claims that state troopers, who have stepped up
 efforts to nail drug couriers, have targeted blacks on Interstate 95, a favored route for weapon and drug
 smuggling.

 The colonel's denial echoed recent declarations made by police in other states but did little to convince black
 drivers in Maryland and elsewhere. Profiling-a police practice of viewing certain characteristics as indicators of
 criminal behavior-is common across the U.S. But authorities uniformly deny that race is one of the
 characteristics. "It's a shell game," says Bill Mertens, lead outside counsel for the A.c.L.U. in the case against
 Maryland. "Police use profiling sloppily and rely on racial characteristics in totally illegal ways."

 The issue gained momentum in April when state troopers on the New Jersey Turnpike shot at and wounded two
 blacks and a Hispanic in a van pulled over for speeding. The incident sparked protests just as the issue,
 dubbed by victims as "DWB"-driving while black-had caught Washington's attention.

 Earlier this year the House of Representatives passed a bill that would require the government to monitor race
 data on searches across the country. Representative John Conyers Jr. argued, "There are virtually no
 African-American males-including Congressmen, actors, athletes and office workers-who have not been
 stopped at one time or another for .. . driving while black."

 Marshaling numbers from the state troopers' own records, the plaintiffs in the Maryland case presented dizzying
 facts: while 75% of the drivers on I-95 are white, only 23% of those that troopers stopped and searched from
 1995 to 1997 were white; 17% of drivers are black, yet 70% of those pulled over were black. State police
 countered with statistics showing that troopers stopped twice as many whites as blacks in 21 months ending in
 March.

 One of the plaintiffs, Philadelphian Gary Rodwell, who uses I-95 once a week to take his seven-year-old son in
 Baltimore to Cub Scout meetings, told TIME he was enraged at being stopped: "In spite of everything I've done
 to live on the right side of the law, someone has made a decision that I'm not worthy of freely traveling on I-95.

 "People stood up against injustice in our community before us," says Rodwell. "It's our responsibility to do the
 same thing for those who come behind." -By Harriet Barovick. With reporting by Elizabeth Rudulph