"Driving While Black" (DWB) in New Jersey.

Ronald Smothers, "Driver Stopped in New Jersey Sues, Claiming Police Profiling," in The New York Times, July 11, 2007 at p. B2.

"TRENTON, July 10 -- A black driver who was stopped, detained and extensively searched by state police on the New Jersey Turnpike last year and was given a warning for a faulty tail light filed a lawsuit in Federal District Court on Tuesday charging that there was nothing wrong with his van and that racial profiling was at work." (An "error" was inserted in this essay and corrected, until the next time that I read this post.)

"... 'I didn't do anything wrong, and there was nothing wrong with my car, so the police stopped me for only one reason: I am a black man,' said the man, Willie Nevius, 38, of North Carolina, in a statement."

It is interesting that the Times did not find it necessary, initially, to refer to this gentleman as "Mr. Willie Nevius."

"Mr. Nevius said he 'felt humiliated' because of the two hour stop, which ultimately involved five officers and a drug-sniffing dog."

No helicopters? Usually, corrupt politicians tell cops to hit enemies with tons of parking tickets or arrest them for pissing on the sidewalk. (Another "error" inserted and corrected.) The legal system is responsive to unofficial and extra legal pressures making a mockery of due process of law. Right, Senator Bob? How about taking a letter out of what I've written to show that you're on the up-and-up?

I recall numerous occasions when African-Americans were stopped, allegedly, because a police officer sitting in a police cruiser, at night, claimed to observe the passengers in a car travelling at the speed limit -- on the opposite side of the Turnpike -- to be without their seat belts. Not once did a judge or prosecutor find this testimony "questionable."

"... 'The dog made quite a mess of things and helped itself to some of my client's edible property,' said the lawyer for Mr. Nevius, William Buckman, 'I think it was an apple pie.' ..."

This calls for punitive damages. No more "errors" inserted?

"This latest charge of racial profiling comes at a time when a 21-member advisory committee appointed by Governor Jon S. Corzine is deciding whether the state should terminate an agreement allowing federal monitors to review records of the department's traffic-stop monitor."
I think New Jersey should agree to have federal monitors run the entire state, especially the legal system. State inmates would probably do a better job (because they are more honest) than Trenton's politicians and justices. True, these are overlapping categories -- New Jersey inmates and politicians. Everybody can see that Mayor Sharpe James is being offered to the feds as a distraction. I wonder why?

How the hell are ya, Bob? How's that Grand Jury investigating your activities? Hope everything's O.K. How's the scuba diving off Miami Beach?

"According to a suit filed in Camden, two state troopers stopped Mr. Nevius in northern Burlington County at about 4:30 p.m. on Sept. 12, and they were eventually joined by two other troopers who asked to search his 2001 Chevrolet Express van. Under state court precedents, the state police are required to seek permission for such a search in the absence of visible contraband."

The police officers will usually put the contraband on the scene, if they need to do so. There has been no response to Defense requests for records made by a hood-mounted video camera. There won't be any meaningful response to those requests. No doubt videos and other records will be "lost." Despite the state's Open Public Records Act, I can attest to the daily denial of reports and records by the authorities in the most corrupt and mob-infested jurisdiction in the nation, whose courts are a gruesome joke for those forced to appear in them.

Give New Jersey's shit-smeared courts (and the judges propped up in them after three martini lunches) no respect. They deserve no respect. "Errors?" Judges give no respect to litigants. Oh, here come the hackers and computer viruses. More threats and attempts at intimidation, guys?

What you smell, as you drive past landfills and chemical plants near the Turnpike, is the dismal moral quality of New Jersey's laws and of those who apply them. Keep driving.