Pleading guilty before the county Superior Court to charges of "official misconduct" and of making false statements in connection with the incident, Hogan and Kenna were fired from their jobs and fined $280 each. Charges of aggravated assault and attempted murder, which could have brought prison sentences of up to 20 years, were dropped by prosecutor James Gerrow as part of a plea bargain. Neither cop will serve any jail time or be placed on probation.

The 1998 incident sparked protests among Blacks and Hispanics in New Jersey, and helped to fuel a nationwide debate on the widespread police practice of racial profiling. State and federal officials were forced to investigate widespread accusations against New Jersey State Police that pointed to racist methods as standard operating procedure.

A 1999 report by the state attorney general admitted that racial profiling by troopers was "real--not imagined."

In accepting the plea bargain, Judge Charles Delehy said the cops acted out of "misguided zeal and misguided loyalty born of an indoctrination into an approach to law enforcement that can generally be described as Machiavellian--the end justifies the means."

Kenna and Hogan told the court that they had followed state police policy to aggressively stop and arrest Black and Hispanic drivers on the turnpike. Some 75 other troopers had helped them to cover up the crime, said the two cops.

They explained that troopers routinely targeted Black and Hispanic drivers for illegal car searches, frequently engaging in "rip and strip"--cop jargon for the dismantling of car doors, allegedly in search of drugs.

Hogan said that covering up the practice of racial profiling was commonplace and condoned. "No one at the station, including supervisors, seemed to be concerned when a minority arrestee was brought to the station after the radio call had identified that driver as white," he said. "From the time when I first came to the Turnpike I was aware this was occurring. It was so common I just assumed it was how it was done."  
 
Outrage greets decision
Many Blacks and others rejected the idea that the cops should be let off so lightly because they were just "doing their jobs." Regina Waynes Joseph, president of the Garden State Bar Association, a group of Black lawyers, said her organization was outraged.

"That the judge characterized Kenna and Hogan as victims in this debacle, rather than the four students who were shot at 11 times for no reason at all, I believe tells the whole story about race in this country," said Joseph. "Essentially the message this sends is that the life of a child of color is worth $280."  
 
'What cops do every day'
At a January 18 forum on the fight for Black rights in Newark, speakers Ron Washington, from the Black Telephone Workers for Justice, and Ved Dookhun, of the Socialist Workers Party, denounced the plea bargain. Referring to the turnpike assault, Dookhun said, "This is what cops do every day. These are the kinds of conditions that workers--especially Black and immigrant workers--face every day under capitalism. The brutality meted out by cops in New Jersey mirrors the brutality carried out by the U.S. military against workers in Afghanistan."

Washington and Dookhun encouraged forum participants to join a January 21 rally celebrating Martin Luther King's birthday and demanding that the Verizon telephone company allow workers a paid holiday. The rally, which attracted some 120 participants, also called for an end to police brutality and opposed the war in Afghanistan and associated attacks on civil liberties.

On January 17 the leaders of a number of New Jersey civil rights organizations held a press conference demanding new hearings to determine which cops had been part of the conspiracy to cover up the shooting.  
 
 
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