LAWSUIT SAYS BUST TARGETED BLACKS

TULIA, Texas - Kareem Abdul Jabbar White sat across a courtroom table from
the Swisher County district attorney, hoping he'd be found innocent of drug
charges but knowing the odds were against him.

Ten people tried in the previous 10 months, including his older brother and
younger sister, had been convicted of delivering cocaine to the same
undercover officer.

That officer, Tom Coleman, spent a year and a half building drug cases
against 43 people in this West Texas farming community. All but three of
those that Coleman says sold him the drugs are black.

District Attorney Terry McEachern says racial prejudice played no role in
the busts, which resulted in 17 guilty pleas and 11 guilty verdicts. White
was convicted in early September of one count of delivering a controlled
substance after a two-day trial, and sentenced to 60 years in prison.

But the Texas American Civil Liberties Union on Friday filed a lawsuit in
federal court alleging civil rights violations, conspiracy and
discrimination "intended to accomplish the forbidden aim of cleansing Tulia
of its black population.''

The suit was filed on behalf of Yul Bryant, who was arrested in July 1999
for allegedly selling cocaine.

His case was dismissed after McEachern learned that Coleman was not certain
he had bought cocaine from Bryant.

Now others are coming forward, claiming they were unjustly prosecuted.

LaWanda Smith, who pleaded guilty to one count of delivering a controlled
substance, says she only did so because she was afraid of taking her
chances on a trial. But she says she never sold drugs to Coleman.

"I have never met the guy,'' she said. "Not ever.''

Proud Of The Bust

Coleman came to Tulia, midway between Lubbock and Amarillo, in late 1997.
Tulia has just under 5,000 residents, about 250 of them black.

He was a Texas Ranger's son and had been a Pecos police officer and Cochran
County sheriff's deputy, but he left law enforcement in 1996 under
questionable circumstances.

He worked as a welder before being hired in Tulia in 1998 as an undercover
drug agent for the Swisher County Sheriff's Department.

"I told him to go wherever his investigation led him,'' Swisher County
Sheriff Larry Stewart testified.

Critics suggest that Stewart guided Coleman to target specific residents.

"Sheriff Stewart told me that he had a list of black people in town he
wanted investigated,'' Mattie White, a prison guard who is Kareem White's
mother, said in an affidavit. "(He) said that this was how all of these
people had come to be indicted.''

At Kareem White's trial, his lawyer, Dwight McDonald, asked Stewart if he
remembered telling Mattie White that more black residents were arrested
because "black people do drugs in the streets and the parks and white
people do them in their home.''

"That is something that might have been said,'' Stewart answered.

On July 23, 1999, a drug task force pulled suspects from their beds and
paraded them, still in their nightclothes, across the courthouse lawn in
front of television cameras.

Coleman took great pride in the bust.

"I walked in there with 'police' written across my vest and pulled off my
mask and they just stared at me with their mouths open,'' he told the
Amarillo Globe-News. "A lot of them just kept saying, 'I can't believe
you're a cop. No way you're a cop.' It was just perfect.''

The Texas Narcotic Control Program later named him "Outstanding Lawman of
the Year.''

Coleman, who is working undercover elsewhere in Texas, refused to be
interviewed by The Associated Press.

Qualifications Questioned

Not everyone thought Coleman should be a cop.

In a 1996 letter to the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement Officer
Standards and Education, Cochran County Sheriff Ken Burke said Coleman quit
without notice in the middle of a shift, leaving behind debts and a patrol
car parked in his driveway.

Burke said he had to garnish Coleman's wages for back child support.

"It is in my opinion that an officer should uphold the law,'' Burke wrote.
``Mr. Coleman should not be in law enforcement, if he is going to do people
the way he did this town (Morton).''

Cochran County authorities filed charges of theft and abuse of power
against Coleman about five months into his undercover assignment.

The charge was dismissed after he paid $6,950 in retribution.

In addition, Coleman's ex-girlfriend, Carla Bowerman, complained in
November 1996 to Marion County authorities that Coleman constantly called
and drove by her home.

She didn't pursue charges, but wanted the complaint on file "in case he ...
causes trouble.''

The judge in White's trial, state District Judge Jack Miller, refused to
allow the allegations about Coleman into evidence.

He did permit Burke and a prosecutor from Fort Stockton to testify at
White's trial that they knew Coleman to be "untruthful.''

But Sheriff Stewart and a number of other officers followed, swearing to
Coleman's honesty.

Police Misconduct Charged

White's trial was a "judicial lynching,'' said Texas ACLU executive
director Will Harrell. "I haven't ever seen such a clear case of
prosecutorial and police misconduct.''

But McEachern remains satisfied with Coleman's role in the drug busts.

"If I didn't have complete confidence that the law had not been broken and
that he was not telling the truth, then I would be the first one to dismiss
all of these cases," McEachern said.

Several defendants accepted plea bargains after the first few trials
resulted in prison terms of up to 99 years.

Attorney Erick Willard said he advised two clients to accept a deal
"because they did not believe and I did not believe they could get a fair
hearing ... and that is a sad statement."