An Inside Story of Racial Bias and Denial, New Jersey Files Reveal Drama Behind Profiling The 91,000 pages of state documents released last week about
racial profiling by the New Jersey State Police offer a rare
look at one of the most contentious battlefields in the
nation's war on drugs.

Taken as a whole, the reams of memos, internal investigations,
complaint letters and confidential reports show how the institutions
of state government denied accusations of selective enforcement for
nearly a decade before grudgingly admitting it and making changes.

But the words written by the thousands of people involved —
troopers, civilians, attorneys general and state officials — also tell an
intensely emotional story: one of gung-ho troopers who saw
themselves as unappreciated as they risked their lives to protect New
Jersey's minority members from drug violence, and who sought
promotions based on high-visibility drug arrests; the anger and
defensiveness of police commanders who believed their tactics were
unjustly branded as racist; the outrage of minority troopers ordered to
view their own neighbors as drug suspects; the bewilderment of black
and Hispanic drivers who could not understand why they were
detained by the police simply because of the color of their skin.