Report on race and speeding challenged

Associated Press

TRENTON, N.J. — The Justice Department is questioning a New Jersey study that suggests black drivers speed more than other drivers, and has asked the state to withhold the report.

The state troopers union, however, demanded Thursday that the report be made public, saying it absolves troopers of charges of racial profiling.

"It seems like it flies in the face of what they’ve been saying," said Ken McClelland, president of the State Trooper Fraternal Association. "We stopped the people who were speeding."

The study found black drivers sped much more than other drivers and the racial gap was wider than officials expected, according to sources who have read the study. The racial gap widened at higher speed limits, but there was little difference in 55 mph zones, the study also found.

The New York Times reported Thursday that Justice Department officials have serious concerns about the methods used to gather the data. The researchers, though, said their methods were sound.

Gov. James McGreevey defended the decision to keep the study confidential, adding that the state will ask the Justice Department for its reasons why the information should not be made public.

The federal government asked for the study as part of its probe into allegations of racial profiling. Specially designed radar gun cameras were used last spring to photograph tens of thousands of drivers on the New Jersey Turnpike. The photos were shown to teams of three evaluators who tried to determine each driver’s race without knowing whether they were speeding.

The newspaper reported that Mark Posner, a Justice Department lawyer, believed the results may have been skewed by such things as glare on windshields, weather and camera placements.

"Based on the questions we have identified, it may well be that the results reported in the report are wrong or unreliable," Posner wrote in a letter to state officials.

Researchers said the concerns were unfounded. "We’re quite confident in the validity of the report," Robert Voas, who was involved in the study, told the newspaper.