RACISM SAID TO HAVE FUELED DRUG CASES

Residents Questioning Arrests, Long Sentences In Small Texas Town

TULIA, Texas -- The officers and deputies came in the morning. They
arrested pig farmers and warehouse workers, single mothers and lithe young
men who once were heroes and the town's pride and joy -- its high school
football team. Forty-three people in all.

The biggest drug raid in Swisher County's history was also the darkest day
in memory for Tulia's small, tightknit African-American community. In a
matter of hours, one of every six black residents had been indicted on
cocaine-selling charges.

At first, hardly anyone raised a voice in protest. The local paper
celebrated the roundup of the "scumbags'' corrupting the town's children.
Those few with doubts kept quiet, except for one man -- a self-described
"hick farmer" and gadfly named Gary Gardner.

Thanks in part to his efforts, Tulia now stands divided by a controversy
that has thrust this town of 5,000 in the drought-stricken Texas Panhandle
into the national debate about drugs, race and the criminal-justice system.

Sentiment here began to turn after a series of reports about the white
undercover agent who had set up the 1999 sting, a journeyman deputy with a
tainted past whose word was the only evidence against most of the
defendants. That information led the ACLU last week to file a federal civil
rights lawsuit against the county, charging the arrests were racially
motivated.

"I just worked the facts, and the facts show that a lot of these people
aren't guilty," said Gardner, who is white. "It's like a 500-piece jigsaw
puzzle you dump on the floor, and years later it begins to make sense."

In the past year, Tulia's one-bench courthouse has hosted 11 drug trials,
each one ending with a conviction, most without a single black person on
the jury.

Many of those convicted have received huge, Texas-sized sentences for
selling relatively small amounts of cocaine -- crimes big-city prosecutors
and judges would most likely punish with a few years of probation.

The most recent trial ended last month with the conviction of Kareem Abdul
Jabbar White, who got 60 years for selling one-eighth of an ounce of
cocaine (street value: about $150).

"These drug traffickers have been a cancer on our community long enough,"
one local paper editorialized. "It's time to give them a major dose of
chemotherapy behind bars."

Official: We're Tough On Drugs

Buoyed by such sentiments, the county district attorney and sheriff have
defended both the drug raid and the aggressive prosecution. "We're not a
lynching county,"said Swisher County District Attorney Terry McEachern.
"This is a community that's tough on drugs."

And no one denies that Tulia has a drug problem. Rural communities have the
nation's fastest-growing rate of cocaine and heroin use. But to some here
it seems that, at best, the local authorities rounded up a bunch small-time
users -- many had previous arrests for petty offenses -- and treated them
as if they were million-dollar drug kingpins.

"These are the young people we're supposed to be trying to help," said
Charles Kiker, a retired Baptist preacher and one of a small but growing
circle of who have denounced the raid as government-sponsored "ethnic
cleansing."

"It's not the drugs they're after," said Mattie White, a guard at a nearby
state prison who had three adult children arrested in the raid, including
Kareem. "They don't want these kids in this town."

To these critics, the allegations behind the drug sting are patently
absurd: Tulia is a poor, hardscrabble community. And yet the defendants
were charged with selling powder cocaine, a rich man's habit. And why, they
ask, were no guns, drug paraphernalia or large amounts of cash seized in
the raid?

"You see how small this town is?" asked Billy Wafer, a warehouse worker who
was arrested but later freed by a judge. "How can 43 drug dealers survive
in this community? Everybody in this town would have to be a drug user."

William Harrell, executive director of the Texas ACLU, calls the Tulia case
"the most blatant example of police and prosecutorial misconduct I've seen
in my entire career. "Harrell has petitioned federal authorities to launch
a criminal investigation.

In response to such charges and a flood of critical publicity, local
residents are organizing a rally for Monday to thank the sheriff "for
making Swisher County a safer place to live."

The bust has transformed Tulia into a small-town laboratory on the social
impact of the nation's drug wars. So many people were arrested and put on
trial that the county had to raise its property tax 5 percent to pay for it
all.

The first defendant to go to trial -- one of three non-blacks arrested --
got the longest sentence, 434 years. Freddie Brookin, a 22-year-old black
man with no prior convictions, received a 20-year sentence for delivering
an eighth of an ounce of cocaine. Other defendants began to opt for plea
bargains, admitting guilt in exchange for lesser sentences.

Enter Gardner, a longtime nemesis of county officials who had tangled
earlier with local officials over their plan to administer random drug
tests at Tulia High School.

Gardner wrote a letter to each defendant, urging them to seek a trial
outside of Swisher County. He looked deeper into the case and fed
information to journalists in Amarillo, Lubbock and elsewhere.

Soon, all of Tulia knew what only a handful inside the office of Sheriff
Larry Stewart had known for months: The county's first-ever undercover
narcotics officer himself had been arrested halfway through the sting on a
theft warrant.

Tom Coleman had run afoul of authorities in nearby Cochran County, where he
had worked as a deputy. The sheriff there accused him of stealing gasoline
from the county. Coleman also owed more than $6,900 in debts to local
merchants. His new boss, Stewart, had Coleman fingerprinted and then
released him on bond.

A few weeks later, Coleman cleared his debts and paid restitution, although
he denied stealing the gas. The matter was quietly dropped. He returned to
his undercover work, making friends in the black community under the alias
"T.J. Dawson."

Coleman is said to be working undercover at a new job and could not be
reached for comment.

Witnesses: He's Untrustworthy

When Coleman's arrest finally became news, long after the sting's climax,
what many black residents had been saying all along didn't seem so
implausible. Coleman, they charged, had completely fabricated most of his
drug buys.

In White's trial, defense attorneys produced four witnesses who testified
that Coleman had cheated or lied to them -- including the vice chairman of
a bank, a Pecos County prosecutor and the Cochran County sheriff. All said
Coleman was untrustworthy.

A tall, otherwise amiable man, Sheriff Stewart spoke about the controversy
with a weary, pained expression -- confessing to being "worn out" by months
of questions.

"There was never any attempt to target a specific group," he said. "We
wanted to attack the drug problem. These are the ones that got caught."