TEXAS DRUG STING LEADER DEFENDS METHODS AND MEN

TULIA, Tex., -The leader of the narcotics task force responsible for an
undercover operation in which more than a 10th of this town's black
population was arrested defended the task force in court today against
accusations of racial bias and fabricated evidence.

The official, Lt. Michael Amos of the Panhandle Regional Narcotics
Trafficking Task Force, had praise for the work of the lone undercover
officer, Thomas Coleman, whose credibility and tactics in the July 23,
1999, sting operation have come under attack, though he said he would have
difficulty in hiring him today.

Four prisoners serving sentences of 20 to 90 years have challenged their
convictions, and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ordered this week's
hearings to help it consider those applications.

Almost all of the questioning of Lieutenant Amos concerned Mr. Coleman,
whose 18-month investigation culminated in the arrests of 46 people, almost
all of them black, in this rural town halfway between Amarillo and Lubbock.

Lieutenant Amos, who is also a police officer in Amarillo, testified that
Mr. Coleman used a charged racial epithet in front of him. He said he
chastised Mr. Coleman.

"I told him that there's a time and a place for that sort of language," he
said. "The office is not such a place."

Asked to name an appropriate time or place, he said that some undercover
work could be compromised "by trying to be politically correct."

"It didn't offend me," Lieutenant Amos said of the term. "It just upset me
that he was using it in the office."

Lieutenant Amos said he grew concerned over time by the focus of Mr.
Coleman's investigation on Tulia's small African-American community, which
numbers perhaps 400.

"We did try to steer him off and diversify, so to speak," Lieutenant Amos
said, adding that the effort failed.

The defendants' attacks on their convictions are based largely on their
assertions that the prosecution was racially biased and that prosecutors
failed to turn over important information about Mr. Coleman's colorful history.

Mr. Coleman, 43, wearing a black leather jacket and a black cowboy hat, was
at the courthouse today but said that he had no comment. He is expected to
testify on Wednesday or Thursday.

Lieutenant Amos acknowledged that he was aware of some troubling
information about Mr. Coleman before he was hired.

Vanita Gupta, a lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund,
which represents two of the inmates, asked him to explain notes prepared by
a member of his staff who had called Mr. Coleman's previous law enforcement
employers.

"Tom was gung-ho and became a discipline problem, had possible mental
problems," one note said about one such conversation.

"Tom needed constant supervision, had a bad temper and would tend to run to
his mother for help," said another.

Lieutenant Amos testified that these comments were only a minor concern. He
attributed the first to the fact that Mr. Coleman was being divorced at the
time, the second to the need to supervise many young officers closely.

The task force tried but failed to reach Sheriff Ken Burke of Cochran
County and Mr. Coleman's most recent law enforcement employer. Sheriff
Burke's views about Mr. Coleman are set out in a 1996 letter to the Texas
Commission on Law Enforcement.

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

Lieutenant Amos did not dispute the significance of some of this
information but said the ultimate hiring decision belonged to the local
sheriff here, Larry Stewart, who is expected to testify on Wednesday.

Lieutenant Amos added that a great deal of other negative information about
Mr. Coleman, including misidentifications of drug suspects and
inconsistencies and alterations in his reports, was not known to him at the
time of the defendants' trial in late 1999 and early 2000.

He said he knew that Mr. Coleman was arrested while working undercover for
stealing gasoline from Cochran County in 1998, but that this was insignificant.

The charges were dismissed in exchange for the repayment of $7,000 of
various debts Mr. Coleman had run up.

Asked if he would hire Mr. Coleman today, Lieutenant Amos replied, "I would
have difficulty doing it."

But he said he remained satisfied with Mr. Coleman's performance here.

"The bottom line is that Tom came in and we asked him to do a job," he
said. "He done us a good job."