But for all that experience, Dunbar seemed a little rattled a few months ago when he was introduced at a press conference as the new superintendent of the troubled New Jersey State Police. Did he feel any pressure, a reporter wanted to know. "Do I feel any pressure?" he repeated. "Are you kidding me? I feel a lot of pressure."
The reason can be summarized by two words: racial profiling. For the past several years, the blue and gold colors of the state police have been tarnished by withering criticism of the division's practice of stopping motorists in part because of their race.
The issue of racial profiling has long percolated across the state, but the 1998 turnpike shooting of three unarmed African-American men forced a spotlight on the practice and, in the process, has shaken the proud police corps.
Many rank-and-file cops contend that the two white troopers involved in the 1998 incident--one of whom was knocked down by the victims' vehicle before the shooting--are being railroaded. Black clergy and political leaders insist the incident is characteristic of a deeply racist police force unaccustomed to any accountability.
For the past two years, the issue of racial profiling has overwhelmed the state's political debate. Early last year, Governor Christine Todd Whitman fired Dunbar's predecessor, Carl Williams, after Williams, in an interview with the Newark Star-Ledger, defended traffic-stop practices by explaining that certain minority groups tended to be involved in the drug trade.
Dunbar was not the governor's first choice to succeed Williams. The state Senate rejected her initial selection without a vote, refusing to consider an out-of-state candidate. Dunbar, however, served as the perfect compromise. A resident of New Jersey, he spent four years as a state trooper there himself before joining the FBI in 1977. After spending time in the Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C., FBI offices, he was transferred to New York, where he became the special agent in charge of administration.
Dunbar's FBI work drew scrutiny--and some sharp criticism--for his role in ending surveillance of a group of terrorists less than a year before they bombed the World Trade Center. Dunbar, according to court documents, refused to authorize further payments to a paid informer within the group who declined to wear a tape recorder. Seven months later, the bombing occurred.
That kind of second-guessing is likely to continue for as long as Dunbar holds his new post. He inherits an insular police force that is under siege both from outside and from within, and lacks any real base of political support. African-American leaders and the State Troopers Fraternal Association both view the new chief warily.
The federal Justice Department is in the midst of an investigation of the New Jersey police for civil rights violations. A group of black troopers is suing over hiring and promotion practices. Other troopers bitterly resent the ouster of Williams, who many believe lost his job simply for speaking the truth. Since the racial profiling furor began, the number of arrests made by the force has begun to decline.
"He's being asked to be a reconciliator," says Renee Steinhagen, executive director of the Public Interest Law Center of New Jersey, who also represents 14 troopers in a suit against the force. "He has to change the perception within the state police of a conflation between minority status and criminality."
If anyone can straighten out this mess, it might be Dunbar. For one thing, he starts with a balanced approach to the job: He says his own experience as a trooper was a positive one, but he also claims that he himself was a victim of racial profiling by state police years ago, after he had left. In any case, Dunbar's familiarity with both sides will come in handy. So will his experience under intense pressure.
