Racial Profiling Settlement
New Jersey officials will pay $250,000 to a retired Philadelphia prison officer and two other African American motorists to settle their lawsuit contending state troopers stopped them because of their race.
The settlement, announced yesterday by civil-rights lawyers in both states, was called recognition of the “enormity of the humiliation inflicted upon African American male motorists” stopped without cause by New Jersey troopers.
And, while not admitting wrongdoing, a spokesman for New Jersey Attorney General David Samson said the settlement and a continuing review of other outstanding racial-profiling lawsuits were part of an administration program to “restore the public confidence in the New Jersey State Police.”
“The importance of this lawsuit settlement is that it begins to acknowledge, on the part of the state, the wrong done to individuals simply because they were stopped because of their skin color,” said Stefan Presser, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Philadelphia office, one of the lawyers representing the three men.
Since a 1999 consent decree with the U.S. Justice Department, New Jersey’s state police have been under supervision of a federal monitor. Troopers must compile information about traffic stops, including the race of motorists pulled over or arrested.
Early last year, New Jersey officials agreed to pay $12.9 million to four African American men shot at by troopers in 1998 after they were stopped on their way to a basketball tryout in North Carolina. Three of them were injured.
Unlike that encounter, the 1999 suit filed in federal court in Camden on behalf of Thomas White, Fred Hamiel and Tyrone Hamilton did not involve physical injuries, arrest or detention.
Philadelphia civil-rights lawyer Alan L. Yatvin, another of the plaintiffs’ lawyers, said that fact underscored the significance of the settlement: “I don’t think you pay a quarter-million dollars to three plaintiffs and their lawyers for no reason.”
The settlement carries no admission of wrongdoing by state troopers or state officials.
“Both the governor and the attorney general are committed to ending racial profiling,” said Chuck Davis, a spokesman for the New Jersey attorney general. “We intend to restore the public confidence in the New Jersey State Police. A resolution of these cases, which were filed under the previous administration, will be a major step in achieving that goal.”
What is unknown, said lawyers familiar with the controversy, is how many cases New Jersey officials ultimately might face. The outstanding lawsuits in New Jersey courts name a dozen individual plaintiffs but originally were filed as class actions on behalf of more than 100,000 black motorists stopped by troopers based on skin color.
The judges overseeing those cases, however, have rejected class-action certification for those cases. Thus, those 12 cases will proceed to trial individually. An unknown number of other individual alleged victims still must file before the statute of limitations - usually two years - expires.
Yatvin said White, 71, a retired Philadelphia correctional officer and a Korean War veteran who earned two Bronze Stars and a Silver Star, will receive $44,000. Hamiel, 43, a former Philadelphia newspaper advertising executive now living in North Carolina, and Hamilton, 36, a juvenile corrections officer from Elizabeth in North Jersey, each will receive $42,500.
The remaining $121,000 will be divided among the lawyers: Yatvin, Presser, Philadelphia civil-rights lawyer David Rudovsky, and William Buckman, a Moorestown lawyer who has represented the South Burlington County branch of the NAACP and is cocounsel in a pending state court class action over racial profiling.
White, the lead plaintiff, could not be reached for comment.
In a sworn deposition June 14, 2001, White described the fear and humiliation he felt when he was stopped by troopers for “driving erratically,” once in May 1998 on the turnpike near Exit 7 in Burlington County and again a month later near Exit 9 at New Brunswick.
Both times, White testified, he kept his hands on the steering wheel of his 1997 Buick Park Avenue and consented to a car search.
“I didn’t want to do nothing to provoke the gentlemen… . I don’t have too much confidence in my safety in the presence of a state trooper,” White testified.
But inside, White continued, he was “full of anger… . I wasn’t speeding. I’m driving safely. [Race] was the only possible reason that they could pull me over.”