EXPOSE BEGUN BY MONTCLAIR NATIVE

Those who have followed the wild saga of Tulia, Texas, that started with 38
members of a largely African-American community being summarily arrested,
charged with drug crimes of which they were wholly innocent, and quickly,
unquestioningly convicted, may not realize that public attention to this
outrage had been created by a native of Montclair.

Several months ago, Bob Herbert, op ed columnist for The New York Times,
began an expose of the Tulia story through a series of crisp, factual
articles. Shortly afterward, the legal people of NAACP got to work and the
basis for those wholesale arrests and convictions has been revealed as the
work of an individual who sounds like a textbook sociopath.

Mr. Herbert was born and raised here and graduated from Immaculate
Conception High School. His father was an upholsterer who had really wanted
to be a journalist. In an email exchange, Bob Herbert wrote that he really
"loved" Montclair.

Nancy Brach

Montclair