ACLU SUIT ACCUSES U.S. CUSTOMS OF 'PROFILING'

The American Civil Liberties Union has sued the U.S. Customs Service,
accusing inspectors of engaging in "racial profiling" in singling out an
African American woman for a body search that the woman says was sexually
abusive and humiliating.

The ACLU filed the suit in federal district court in Newark on Friday on
behalf of Yvette Bradley, a 33-year-old New York advertising executive at
SpikeDDB, a firm co-owned by filmmaker Spike Lee.

Bradley says that upon returning from a vacation in Jamaica in April last
year, she and other black women were singled out for a luggage search and
that she was then subjected to an intrusive physical search. After she
contacted Customs late last year, Bradley said she was told it was simply a
routine "pat down" search.

"It was absolutely humiliating," Bradley said in an interview after a
Manhattan news conference called to announce the lawsuit. "All I kept
thinking was, 'Why is this happening to me?' I was just stunned. It was
degrading, and I was absolutely helpless."

The lawsuit follows complaints from other black women that Customs agents
unfairly target them for pat downs and intrusive searches. A class-action
suit filed by a group of women in Chicago is pending.

A report issued last month by the General Accounting Office, the
congressional watchdog agency, found that black women were nearly twice as
likely to be strip-searched on suspicion of drug smuggling than white men
or women, a practice not supported by a higher rate of discovery of drugs
or other illegal substances among minority groups.

Customs officials declined to comment on the specifics of the lawsuit
Friday but said that Customs Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly has made
elimination of any racial profiling--never an official agency policy--a top
priority and that steps have been taken to reduce intrusive searches,
including the use of sophisticated X-ray machines.

"Our commissioner has done a very good job in not only pinpointing the
problem, but in addressing it," said Customs spokesman Bill Anthony. "We
take our responsibilities very seriously. Ideally, we would like to have a
situation where we inspect 100 people and we arrest 100 people. But that is
not practically possible."

But ACLU attorney Reginald Shuford said not enough has been done. "We
believe that what happened to Yvette is a textbook example of racial
profiling. If they deny that, then how can we believe they are really
trying to fix this problem?" he said.

Lee issued a statement on the lawsuit but did not attend the New York news
conference. "I am outraged that the criminal justice system continues to
unfairly target people of color," the filmmaker said.

Shuford said he was required to include a figure for the amount of damages
Bradley is seeking when he first filed a notice of intention to sue and
picked $500,000 as an arbitrary figure.

"We are not seeking a specific amount of money," he said, but rather
waiting to see if Customs is "willing to make substantial changes from top
to bottom in policy and practices and make sure they are fully implemented
at every level."