AFFIRMATIVE ACTION? LOSE THE DRUG TASK FORCES

Instead of spending an enormous amount of effort obsessing about African
American candidates to the University of Michigan receiving special
treatment, maybe the White House should focus on a genuinely pernicious
form of affirmative action: the special treatment blacks get when it comes
to jail admissions.

The damning fact is that although African Americans make up 13% of drug
users, they account for 37% of those arrested on drug charges, 55% of those
convicted and 74% of all drug offenders sentenced to prison.

And if you want some harsh narrative to put flesh and blood on these harsh
numbers, cast your eyes on Texas, where a judge and special prosecutor
agreed last week to throw out every conviction stemming from the now
notorious Tulia drug sting -- a miscarriage of justice that saw roughly 15%
of the small town's African Americans arrested solely on the uncorroborated
testimony of Tom Coleman, a white undercover cop with a shady past and a
fondness for racial epithets.

Despite growing doubts about Coleman's credibility, prosecutors stood by
their narc, and the defendants, many serving outrageously long prison
sentences, languished behind bars. All that changed last week when, after
an extraordinary hearing in which Coleman's integrity was shredded,
presiding Judge Ron Chapman moved to vacate the convictions. But it's not
time to break out the champagne just yet. The judge's ruling still has to
be approved by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which has a reputation
for bending over backward to uphold convictions. Meanwhile, 13 people
convicted on the testimony of an utterly discredited cop remain locked up,
serving sentences of up to 90 years.

It's also important that we don't allow the powers that be to dismiss the
Tulia fiasco as an aberration and dump all the blame at the feet of a
single rogue cop. A system around that cop allowed him to be the catalyst
for the injustice.

Coleman was hired for the Tulia sting by the Panhandle Regional Narcotics
Task Force, one of an estimated 1,000 drug task forces operating across the
nation with little oversight or accountability. In this corrupt,
bucks-for-busts world, Coleman was a cash cow: The more arrests he made,
the more federal money his task force received.

A quick check of the local papers shows there are entire task forces of Tom
Colemans running amok across Texas, leaving behind a scorched earth of
illegal behavior, mass arrests of innocent people and ruined lives.

There have been so many scandals associated with drug task forces in Texas
that it has prompted a bipartisan move in the state Legislature to abolish
them. Wouldn't that be a nice switch: seeing the Lone Star State leading
the way in something other than executions?

Drug task forces -- the attack dogs of the U.S. drug war -- routinely
target African Americans. Getting rid of these units would be the best kind
of affirmative action.