THE HEAT IS ON A TEXAS TOWN AFTER THE ARRESTS OF 40 BLACKS

TULIA, Tex., Oct. 4 -- On the morning of July 23, 1999, Billy Wafer, a
forklift driver, was swept up in the biggest drug sting in local history:
In this town of only 4,500 people, 43 suspects were arrested on charges of
selling small amounts of cocaine. In some cases, hometown juries later
meted out sentences ranging from 20 years to more than 300 years.

In Tulia, an isolated place ringed by cotton farms and cattle ranches on
the high plains of the Texas panhandle, local officials declared the
operation a stunning success. In all, 22 of the defendants were sent to
prison while others received probation. The undercover agent at the center
of the operation, Tom Coleman, was even named by the state as lawman of the
year.

But more than a year later, an operation once hailed as a victory in the
war on drugs now has civil rights groups and local minorities asking
whether it was really a war on blacks. All but three of the 43 defendants
were black, an enormous percentage considering blacks make up less than 10
percent of the town's population. In fact, roughly 12 percent of the town's
black population was arrested.

The doubts raised about the racial makeup of the group arrested are
compounded by contentions that the investigation was flimsy at best. The
sole evidence in nearly every case was the word of Mr. Coleman, whose own
character had come under criticism in the past. There were no videotapes or
wiretaps or, in most cases, any corroborating witnesses.

"They declared war on this community," said Sammy Barrow, a black resident
with four relatives who were arrested. "You either were going to get a long
term in the penitentiary or you were going to get enough of a deterrent to
get out of here."

So now Tulia itself is on trial: last week, the American Civil Liberties
Union filed a lawsuit on behalf of a defendant whose case was dismissed in
February, apparently because of a false identification. The suit accuses
local officials of singling out blacks to run them out of town. Next week,
the A.C.L.U. plans to file a civil rights complaint with the Justice
Department seeking to revoke financing for the agencies that ran the sting.

The reaction among most whites here has been unflinching support of the
operation and local officials. Public intolerance for drugs is unquestioned
in Tulia; the local school system is one of a handful in the area that
mandate random drug testing for students, a policy that is being challenged
in court. The sheriff and the district attorney, who defend Mr. Coleman's
credibility, also deny that the sting was racially motivated or that the
town is biased.

"This is a good community, and I care a lot about everybody here," said
Swisher County's sheriff, Larry Stewart, who was reluctant to speak in much
detail because of the lawsuit. "There has been a lot more made of this than
is true."

Like many places, Tulia is not immune to drugs. In 1997 and 1998, a total
of nine people were arrested on felony drug charges here. In the previous
two years, 32 were arrested in another sting by the Tulia police.

Some black residents say the town does have a cluster of crack cocaine
users who buy their drugs in larger cities like Amarillo or Plainview. And
several of the defendants had prior drug arrests, including Donald Smith,
who admitted on the stand that he had sold crack to the undercover agent
but who vehemently denied using or selling the more expensive powdered cocaine.

But Mr. Wafer, the forklift driver, contends, "there's no big drug problem
here."

"Can you see 43 dealers surviving in this small town?" he said. "There
would be murders and everything. Everybody would have to be doing it."

Mr. Coleman said Mr. Wafer, 42, sold him cocaine at a local convenience
store. But Mr. Wafer's employer testified that Mr. Wafer was at work at the
time Mr. Coleman said the drug deal took place. Mr. Wafer produced his
timecards. A judge refused to dismiss the cocaine charges but decided there
was insufficient evidence to revoke Mr. Wafer's probation on a 1990
marijuana charge. His trial is pending.

The drug sting began in 1998 when Mr. Coleman, the son of a Texas ranger,
was hired by Sheriff Stewart to run an undercover operation in Tulia under
the supervision of the Panhandle Regional Narcotics Trafficking Task Force
in Amarillo. Mr. Coleman had been a sheriff's deputy and a jailer in other
Texas counties but was working as a welder when he got the job here.

Mr. Coleman underwent training with the Drug Enforcement Administration
then spent more than a year undercover in Tulia, the largest town in
Swisher County. Officials said Mr. Coleman, who is white, got to know many
of Tulia's blacks with the help of a black co-worker at a cattle auction
where he had gotten a job.

Both Sheriff Stewart and the local district attorney, Terry McEachern,
agree that drugs are sold and consumed by whites and Hispanics in Tulia.
But, they said, Mr. Coleman could not make any headway with those groups.

Critics say Mr. Coleman operated with almost no oversight. His reports were
sometimes no more than a paragraph, sometimes with names misspelled. In
some cases, Sheriff Stewart said, Mr. Coleman asked him for photographs of
people he considered to be suspects; some black residents wonder if Mr.
Coleman used the pictures in order to describe them in his later reports.

The initial cases were tried at the Swisher County courthouse in Tulia.
Seven cases went to trial, each ending in a stiff sentence. Usually, the
charges involved the sale of between one gram and four grams of cocaine, a
second-degree felony in Texas. But the penalties were increased on many of
the charges because Mr. Coleman said the deals had occurred near a school
or public park.

Some defendants who had no prior convictions were sentenced to 20 years in
prison.

Cash Love, one of the few white defendants, was convicted of several counts
of selling cocaine and sentenced to more than 300 years. Some blacks in
town believe he was treated harshly because prosecutors did not want the
operation to seem racist and because they wanted to make an example of Mr.
Love, who has many black friends and a mixed-race child.

After the initial trials, other defendants began to plead guilty for
reduced sentences or probation. Mr. McEachern regards these pleas as a
validation of the operation. But many blacks say the defendants pleaded
guilty because they did not believe they could get a fair trial here. The
town's two newspapers had carried the story of the arrests on the front
page, with the Tulia Sentinel, which is now defunct, describing the
suspects as "drug traffickers" and "known dealers." Television stations,
tipped by the sheriff, had filmed the suspects as they were taken to jail
after the sunrise arrests.

"He paraded those people before the cameras with their skivvies and their
hair uncombed like they had caught animals," said Gary Gardner, one of the
few whites in town to publicly criticize the drug sting.

Despite the pretrial publicity, local judges denied motions for a change of
venue.

"Jurors are very, very conscientious in Tulia," Mr. McEachern said,
defending the fairness of the trials.

The cases drew more scrutiny by the news media after Van Williamson, a
court-appointed lawyer, began to look into Mr. Coleman's past.

In 1996, Mr. Coleman had abruptly left the Sheriff's Department in Cochran
County, Tex., leaving behind more than $6,000 in debts to local businesses.
Sheriff Ken Burke of Cochran County wrote a letter to the state agency
overseeing officer standards saying, "Mr. Coleman should not be in law
enforcement, if he is going to do people the way he did this town."

Mr. Williamson also found documents from Mr. Coleman's custody battle for
his two children that raised questions about his character. In interviews
with social workers, some acquaintances and former co-workers at the Pecos
County Sheriff's Department, where Mr. Coleman worked in the mid-90's,
described him as obsessed with guns, hot-tempered and "a compulsive liar."

Ultimately, Mr. Coleman's problems in Cochran County resulted in
misdemeanor charges of theft and abuse of official position involving
gasoline from county pumps that was not paid for. Sheriff Stewart said he
learned of Mr. Coleman's past problems about six months after the
investigation had gotten under way and placed him on a week's vacation to
clear up the matter. Mr. Coleman resumed his undercover work after paying
off his debts with money provided by his mother, Sheriff Stewart said. Mr.
Coleman, who is now working undercover in North Texas, declined to comment,
on the advice of his lawyer, because of the pending civil lawsuit.

He did talk about one case shortly after the arrests but before any of the
resulting controversy.

"I hate dope, and I hate dope dealers," Mr. Coleman told the Amarillo
Globe-News in 1999. "I figured that doing this, I could maybe put a few
dealers in jail before they came across the path of somebody's kid."

The information about Mr. Coleman's past was withheld in all but one of the
Tulia trials. In that case, the defense brought up Mr. Coleman's troubles,
and prosecutors called several Texas Rangers, who said he was a good,
reliable officer.

Jeff Blackburn, the Amarillo lawyer handling the A.C.L.U. lawsuit, said the
defendant in that case, Yul Bryant, had been accused by Mr. Coleman of
selling $160 in cocaine. In his report, Mr. Coleman initially described Mr.
Bryant, who is short and balding, as a tall black man "with bushy type
hair." A later report amended the description to a "BM (black male) with
short type hair." Mr. Bryant spent six months in jail before a judge
dismissed the case.

"The question becomes, `Can you put anyone in question in prison based on
the word of this guy without corroboration?' " Mr. Blackburn asked.

Now, attention on Tulia is growing. Groups like the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People and the William Moses Kunstler Fund
for Racial Justice have organized protest rallies. On Monday, competing
rallies are scheduled, one by critics of the arrests, the other by
supporters of local officials. Indeed, many white residents cannot believe
an officer would fabricate cases.

"I trust our officers," said Doris Ammburn, a local store clerk, "because
if I can't, we're in pretty bad shape."