DRUG CRAZED

This is not the first instance of alleged abuses of task force money. In
June 1998 then-Governor George W. Bush's office stopped funding for the
Permian Basin Drug Task Force amid allegations of falsified meal tickets,
doctored quarterly reports on confiscations and other irregularities. The
task force was abolished that summer.

"Some of them are run well. Some are not run well. It's very political,"
says former task force officer Barbara Markham. "And it's definitely not
money well spent."

With her skinny frame, sleepy eyes and cigarette voice, 41-year-old Markham
comes off like a doper. It's a good look to have if you happen to be an
undercover narcotics officer, as she used to be.

Markham got her start in law enforcement in 1983. At the time, she was 23
years old, living in Frisco, going to college and working for Arco Oil &
Gas--and making more money than she ever would as a police officer. But
Markham found herself scrambling to find work when the oil boom ended, so
she got herself certified as a peace officer and then hired on as a reserve
officer in Frisco, at that time a quiet burg of about 3,000 people. At
first it seemed like there was nothing to it.

"Back then we were dealing with things like cattle in the roadway," says
Markham.

Markham's cushy new job didn't last long. Shortly after she was hired,
Markham's chief approached her about doing some undercover work. Thinking
the assignment would be for only a couple of hours or so, Markham agreed,
unaware that what the chief had in mind would turn her life upside down
forever.

"What they wanted was to put an undercover officer in a high school," says
Markham. "They had searched high and low throughout the county looking for
somebody who was young enough." Or someone who looked young enough.
Although she was 23, Markham could easily pass for a 17-year-old.

After a crash course in narcotics law enforcement and armed with fake
transcripts from Wichita Falls High School, Markham slipped unnoticed into
Wylie, in Collin County. She enrolled in summer school and began hanging
out with the kids, throwing Frisbees and riding skateboards. Little by
little they took her in.

"My goal was not to bust the kids, but to bust who was selling to them,"
Markham says. "That's the way I ran my operation." When Markham was pulled
out of the school six weeks later, 20 suspects were arrested on charges of
delivery of a controlled substance. All but two were adults.

After Wylie, Markham was assigned to Princeton High School, east of
McKinney. There, things did not go so well, as news of her arrival preceded
her among the students. For the next few years Markham continued to
infiltrate student bodies in North Texas in search of drug dealing. By the
time she reached 30, she'd had enough.

"I was almost old enough to be their mom," Markham says.

From high school, Markham went to working the bar scene in small towns
around Dallas before settling into a patrol job with The Colony Police
Department in 1988. When The Colony decided to join an anti-drug task force
that was forming in the area, Markham was selected as the department's
representative, and she was happy to be working drug cases again. But after
she'd spent a few months with the task force, department officials decided
Markham had been working narcotics for too long. They reassigned her to
patrol in 1997. In retrospect, Markham admits that she should have done
exactly what she was told. Instead, she signed on with the now-defunct
Northeast Area Drug Interdiction Task Force based in Rockwall, something
she calls "the worst mistake I ever made in my law enforcement career."

From the beginning, Markham says, she was troubled by the focus of the
Rockwall task force. "The thing I started noticing was that they were only
going after blacks," Markham says. She also got crossways with her new boss.

"He wanted me to take a load of [marijuana] to Vicksburg, Mississippi, and
drop it off there," says Markham. "When I told him I couldn't do that"
because it was against the law, "I got fired."

Rockwall task force commander Mike Box III declines to address Markham's
allegations. He does acknowledge, however, that the task force's emphasis
on low-level dealers and users is merely a response to the concerns of the
community. Residents, he says, routinely call sheriff's departments in the
four-county area complaining of the drug traffic in their neighborhoods.

After Rockwall, Markham's next stop was the Narcotics Trafficking Task
Force of Chambers and Liberty counties in 1995. Once again, Markham found
what she describes as racial profiling.

"Basically, it came down to that white America was no longer touched,"
Markham says. "If you were white, you didn't have to worry much about task
forces, because they were going after crack. But it doesn't take any skill
to make a crack bust. All you have to do is drive up and roll down your
window. It's like shooting fish in a barrel. But the drug problems in these
various counties do not just involve black people, and it's not just crack.
But that's about all they're turning out now. It's just ridiculous."

According to Markham, the problems in Chambers and Liberty counties run
deeper than racial profiling. In 1997, after two years on the job, Markham
discovered that the task force members and their confidential informants
were setting up people for arrests. She became aware of the practice when
she and an informant went to a house in Anahuac in Chambers County to buy
some pot. Markham says that while she and the informant were able to obtain
the dope from the woman who lived in the house, the woman refused to take
their money. Nevertheless, the informant later put in his report that the
woman had in fact taken the money. Markham questioned the informant about
the discrepancy, but she says the informant told her that it was the task
force's standard procedure to falsify statements--that he had done at least
150 cases the same way.

When she took the problem to her superior, Markham says, she was told not
to worry, that it would be the informant, not her, testifying in court.
Soon afterward, she was handed a list of 22 reprimands and was fired.
Markham filed a lawsuit against the task force and eventually settled out
of court. She received a mere $8,000, but she refused to cash the check
when she realized that one condition of the settlement was for her to
remain silent.

Mike Little, district attorney for Chambers and Liberty counties and the
task force project director, did not return phone calls seeking an interview.

"I think there needs to be a Justice Department investigation," Markham
says. "I think the office of the governor should be more involved in these
task forces and look into the corruption, because they are full of
corruption, but they operate like the CIA. Nobody ever knows what they're
doing, which is a good thing investigation-wise. But accountability-wise
and responsibility-wise, nobody's doing anything. Because if anything
happens, everybody's afraid they're going to lose their federal funding. So
they just let you resign, no matter what you've done. You get a clean bill
of health, and you move on to the next task force."

If central casting ever needs a stereotypical Texas lawman, they could turn
to Sheriff Gerald Yezak. In his white straw cowboy hat, elephant-skin
boots, striped western shirt and creased Wrangler blue jeans secured with a
belt anchored by a buckle the size of his fist, the long, tall and
prematurely gray Yezak cuts an impressive figure as he enforces the law in
Robertson County, the 870 square miles where he has spent most of his 45
years. Rolling along in his maroon Dodge Ram 2500, Yezak seems to know
everyone in the county, greeting his constituents by name as he makes his
way along the quiet, lazy streets of Calvert, Bremond and Franklin, the
county seat.

When asked if there is much violent crime in Robertson County, Yezak smiles
and says, "Well, that depends on your definition of much." He goes on to
explain that there were only three homicides in the county last year; none
so far in 2001. In other words, there's not much violent crime in Robertson
County. Yet, when it comes to drugs, Yezak maintains they're a growing problem.

His biggest concern, he says, is the resurgence of methamphetamine
laboratories. Meth labs produce a distinctive and foul chemical odor, one
that's hard to hide in the close confines of urban areas. The sparsely
populated rolling hills of Robertson and other rural counties, the sheriff
says, provide meth dealers with the privacy they need to cook their
product. The proliferation of meth labs, Yezak says, has also produced a
black market for one of the key ingredients in making the drug: anhydrous
ammonia. The substance is in abundance in the county because farmers use it
to fertilize their fields. Normally anhydrous ammonia goes for about $400 a
ton; on the black market, it brings $300 a gallon.

In addition to his job as sheriff, which he has held for the past five
years, Yezak is also project director of the South Central Texas Narcotics
Task Force. He was appointed to replace Robertson County District Attorney
John Paschall early this year, right about the time questions emerged about
the drug arrests in Hearne last November. Yezak had no part in those raids,
and he refuses to fault his predecessor's penchant for targeting
street-corner dealers and small-time users. He points out that the
possession and sale of illegal drugs is against the law, period, regardless
of the amount. That said, however, Yezak also indicates that the priorities
of the South Central task force will be different under his watch. He wants
his team to spend more time looking at the big picture. Specifically, he
plans to target the meth labs that have moved into his territory.

As for the millions of dollars that pour into the Texas drug task forces
each year, Yezak acknowledges that it's a lot of money but believes it is
money well spent. His task force commander, Joe Davis, agrees, insisting
that rural Texas counties like Robertson just don't have the tax base to
adequately fund a war on drugs.

One of Yezak's first moves after taking over was to hire Davis, a small
dark-haired man with 16 years of law enforcement experience, away from the
Brazos Valley Task Force in nearby Bryan. Brazos Valley has a reputation as
a well-run operation, and Davis has a reputation as a stand-up officer,
even among criminal defense attorneys.

"I can tell you this," says Bryan attorney Brad Wyatt, who defended Corvian
Workman in the Hearne drug raids last November, "based on my experience
with this guy in the past, things are going to change in Robertson
County--for the better."

As to why he brought Davis in as the new commander, Yezak is again
diplomatic and deftly avoids saying that it was because he was unhappy with
the way the unit was being run. "The old commander worked for the D.A.,"
says Yezak, between spitting sunflower seed shells into a cup. "He didn't
work for me. If I'm going to have somebody running [the task force], and
I'm the project director, I'm going to have somebody who works for me.
Somebody who answers to me."

Davis isn't one to criticize, either. But he believes his predecessor's
problems--indeed, the problems of the task force--stemmed from poor
supervision of confidential informants. Davis says he plans to avoid those
problems by strictly limiting how and when his officers use informants.

Of course, starting this month, Davis, Yezak and all the other Texas task
forces really don't have any choice but to change their ways.

On September 1, a new state law went into effect limiting the use of
confidential informants in court. Drug convictions no longer may be based
on uncorroborated testimony from a single informant. The new law is one of
several battles won during the last session of the Texas Legislature by a
coalition of groups including the ACLU and the NAACP. The Legislature also
made it easier to obtain background information on law enforcement
officers. The measure was the result of the revelations about undercover
officer Tom Coleman, whose theft charge (later dropped) was discovered
after his busts in Tulia as part of the Panhandle Regional Narcotics Task
Force.

Meanwhile, Coleman continues his gypsy ways. He left the Panhandle task
force and found new employment with the Southeast Dallas County/Ellis
County Task Force in Waxahachie. This past April, however, Coleman was
fired. The Amarillo Globe-News quoted Ellis County District Attorney Joe
Grubb as saying Coleman's termination did not involve any of his work as an
undercover officer. "It involved his relationship with an individual in the
community."

In addition to calling for a Justice Department investigation of Coleman's
actions and last summer's arrests in Tulia, the ACLU also is pushing for
federal reviews of the task force actions in Brownwood and Brady. What's
more, agents from the FBI have interviewed former undercover task force
officer Barbara Markham about her allegations of at least 150 trumped-up
drug charges filed against people arrested by the Narcotics Trafficking
Task Force of Chambers and Liberty counties. Markham currently works for
the small Oak Forest Police Department on Lake Lewisville near Denton.
After seven years of going under cover for task forces, she'll never work
for another one--even if she wanted to.

"I'm completely blackballed," Markham says, "but I wouldn't work for a task
force again."