MILITANTS, ACTIVISTS POST REWARD FOR EX-OFFICER

Groups `don't trust police to catch him'

Calling Houston police untrustworthy, three activist organizations posted a
$500 reward Wednesday for anyone who leads them to ex-narcotics officer Rex
Gates.

"We want to talk to him," Quannell X of the New Black Muslim Movement said
outside the Houston Police Department substation at 2202 St. Emanuel, where
Gates once worked. "We don't trust the police to catch him."

The case of Gates, 32, a nine-year officer who disappeared in
mid-September, has touched off rumors, warnings and lamentations since last
month when police formally began looking for him.

The search began Sept. 25 -- a day after Gates' resignation -- after an
officer allegedly saw him buying six rocks of crack cocaine worth $60 from
a dope dealer in the 1900 block of Miller. When Gates' red Jeep was stopped
later, he told the officer he was "back on the job."

Thinking Gates was still an officer doing undercover work, the policeman
who stopped him let Gates depart that day.

Subsequent checks led police to suspect the ex-officer has "gone bad."
Police now have been told "to exercise caution" if they come into contact
with him.

Quannell X, Kofi Taharka of the Black United Front and Travis Morales, a
member of the national council of La Resistencia, denounced the case of
Gates,who is white, at the news conference, calling police handling of the
ex-officer an example of bias.

Had the ex-officer been a black policeman and was caught in the same
situation, or if his alleged misdeeds had happened in an exclusive white
neighborhood, Quannell X said, Gates would have gone straight to jail.

Morales suggested Gates being allowed to depart might mean the ex-officer
had "the goods" on corrupt officers in the substation.

Quannell X distributed copies of what he called an internal police memo
about Gates' actions. Quannell X said he got the memo from "a (police)
source I cannot name."

It describes how Gates simply quit coming to work, and then returned to
tell a supervisor he was having a bad reaction from taking a pain killer
and an anti-depressant. When the supervisor told Gates to take a drug test,
the memo said, the officer resigned.

Police spokesman Robert Hurst, shown a copy of the unsigned memo, said it
is not an official document.

Copyright 1998 Houston Chronicle

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski