Union leaders say some troopers fear that too many wrong guesses could be mistaken for an attempt to cover up racial profiling. Getting a motorist's race correct every time is impossible, Jones said. It's madness . . . Yet Siegelski and other law enforcement experts say the purpose is not to determine motorists' exact race, but rather to measure trooper behavior. If the trooper repeatedly gets the race wrong, it raises questions, Harris said.
Troopers now face unprecedented oversight.
Highway stops are recorded on video cameras mounted on squad cars, and the tapes are randomly reviewed by supervisors to determine whether troopers are reporting motorists' races accurately. In New Jersey, troopers must radio in the race of a driver before exiting their patrol car. Once they're face to face with the motorist and decide they got the race wrong, they must call and correct the error, according to a procedure adopted in September. Before the procedure was changed, troopers rarely called in to correct the race of the driver, which led to the impression that some troopers were purposely falsifying the race of motorists they stopped, police officials said. Troopers now make sure they got the race right, officials said.