NJ ‘Racial Profiling' Stop Traced to ‘Victim'

A 19-year-old Queens student, Rodney Tanzymore, was arrested Monday morning by New Jersey State Police for allegedly making a phony 911 call last November that resulted in a controversial traffic stop on the New Jersey Turnpike.

At the time of the original incident, State Police were accused of racial profiling when they stopped a bus full of mostly black and Hispanic Queens students who were returning to New York from a visit to Howard University in Washington, DC.

They had stopped the bus on the Turnpike between exits 7 and 7A after getting a 911 just moments earlier when the bus had stopped at a rest stop and someone called in saying they saw thee of the people on the bus brandishing  weapons.

Troopers responded, pulling the bus over and getting everyone off the bus, putting them in handcuffs, and searching them and the bus in an  effort to find the gunmen.

The students said it was humiliating, and they and their parents were quoted in various news accounts as describing this as a return to the racial profiling that once haunted the State Police force, until a federal monitor ruled in recent years that it is now a thing of the past.

The intense investigation led State Police to this arrest of Tanzymore, one of the students on the bus. He is alleged to have made the call, apparently as a prank.

And a source tells us he is alleged to have done this before--in New York. Tanzymore was arrested by the NYPD last August for making a false 911 call.

New Jersey State Police say he will be charged with "causing a false public alarm."

Contact Us