PROVERBIAL ELEPHANT THREATENS TO TRAMPLE TULIA

TULIA - There's an elephant in the room, and nobody wants to
acknowledge it.

Globe-News Editorial Page Editor John Kanelis gave Texas lawmakers a
well-deserved rap on the knuckles for not speaking out on the bill to
free the Tulia 13. This travesty happened in the backyard of Sens.
Teel Bivins and Bob Duncan, and Rep. Warren Chisum. Yet they have
maintained a stoic public silence on the issue.

Bivins and Duncan committed a much more egregious wrong in their
failure to support Senate Bill 515. That bill, in its original form,
would have required corroborating evidence in addition to the
testimony of an undercover police officer in narcotics cases. As it
was amended, it only requires that the judge inform the jury in cases
where the sole evidence is the testimony of an undercover agent.

But even in this weakened form, prosecutors and police unions fought
the bill tooth and nail. The House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee
considered a similar bill. Police Officers Walter Redmon and Donald
DeBlanc of the Houston Police Department, and Tom Gayler, Deputy
Executive Director of the Texas Municipal Police Association,
testified against that bill.

They voiced the opinion that corroborating evidence is relatively
simple in a sting involving kingpin dealers, but extremely difficult
with nickel-and-dime street dealers. And, they added, "It's with the
nickel and dimers that we make most of our cases."

Sen. Juan Hinojosa, sponsor of SB 515, needed the support of 21
senators to get the bill to the Senate floor. He could only get
commitments from 13 of his colleagues - 11 Democrats and Republican
Sens. Bill Ratliff and John Carona.

Again, our local senators were silent in the wings, and SB 515 died an
ignominious death, never seeing the light of day on the Senate floor.

The editorial stance of the Globe-News seems to be that basically the
criminal justice system in Texas works well.

It just needs a little tweaking, as in corroborating evidence.

Some kind of requirement for corroboration is desperately needed. We
simply cannot trust the police to police themselves, especially in
undercover operations. After all, undercover agents come into town on
false pretenses, often with an assumed name. Tom Coleman represented
himself as T. J. Dawson, and had a fake ID. He was a liar up front.
Yet he was supposed to be turned into a paragon of truth when he sat
in the witness chair!

But the system needs more than tweaking. It needs a major
overhaul.

There's no problem with corroboration with the kingpin dealers. It's
the nickel-and-dimers where it poses a problem - and that's where "we
make most of our cases." Apparently that's where they want to do, and
where they plan to continue to make most of their cases - with or
without corroboration.

The Tulia sting was no aberration; it was an extreme example of
business as usual.

Such an extreme example is not likely to happen again soon. Nobody
wants the negative attention Tulia has received. Nobody wants the
financial repercussions that Swisher County has incurred and will
continue to incur in the future. So nobody is going to arrest and
charge 46 people out of a small community without having better
evidence than the uncorroborated testimony of a rogue cop.

But business as usual can continue. They can continue to pick up poor
people in poor communities, one or two at a time, with or without
corroborating evidence, and nobody will pay any attention.

The way the war on drugs is conducted is the elephant in the room that
nobody wants to acknowledge. The drug soldiers can pick up
nickel-and-dime street dealers until hell freezes over and still not
win the war on drugs.

Arrest one, or 46, street dealers, and there will be others standing
in line to take their places.

The war on drugs is a misnomer. It is a war on people, especially on
poor people, and more especially on people of color.

It's time for a major rethinking of drug policy. It's time to start
treating drug abuse as a medical problem rather than a criminal
problem. And that is much more than tweaking the system.

It's time to acknowledge the elephant in the room, and kick him out,
before his odoriferous presence further fouls our system of justice.