A TEXAS TALE EXPOSES DRUG WAR ABUSES

Ever heard of Tulia? It's a little town in Texas that was the scene of one
of the most shameful miscarriages of justice in modern American history--a
highly questionable undercover drug sting that in the summer of 1999 led to
the arrest of one in six of the town's African American population.

And now the dismissal of charges last week against Tonya White, one of the
final two of the original 43 Tulia defendants, has kicked wide open the door
on the dubious nature of the entire Tulia operation while exposing one of
the many shadowy corners of the drug war: the power and abuses of drug task
forces.

White was freed only after her lawyers uncovered a bank deposit slip that
proved she was in Oklahoma City, 300 miles from Tulia, at the time she was
alleged to have sold cocaine to Tom Coleman, the controversial undercover
cop whose uncorroborated testimony was the sole basis for the Tulia roundup.
Since the bust, Coleman's credibility has come under withering fire. Branded
a "compulsive liar" by former co-workers, Coleman was arrested for theft in
the middle of the Tulia operation but, amazingly, was still allowed to
continue his undercover work. And the prosecution continued to trust him and
rely on his word even after it was proved that he had perjured himself on
the stand.

But this story is about more than one small town and one bad cop. It's about
drug task forces allowed to run wild. There are an estimated 1,000 of these
autonomous special units operating nationwide. They came into widespread use
in the 1980s as a way of combating the nation's growing drug problem but
have morphed into the rampaging mad dogs of the drug war, operating with
little oversight or accountability.

Reports of their questionable tactics--particularly the use of unreliable
informants and a disturbing focus on poor, black drug users rather than
big-time dealers--are widespread.

And it's taxpayer money that is paying for this wave of abuse, through a
federal grant program that has distributed billions of dollars to drug task
forces. This grant money is tied to the number of busts a task force
makes--the more arrests made, the more money received. The result is a law
enforcement mind-set that elevates raw numbers over justice.

Combined with draconian asset forfeiture laws, the money-for- arrest model
has turned avaricious cops into drug war entrepreneurs, all too willing to
bend the rules in exchange for more money and power.

Task force cops have even started talking like businessmen. Witness this
Wall Street-flavored assessment from one Texas task force's quarterly
report: "Highway seizures were off a bit this quarter, but crack sales are
still strong."

The more you look into drug task forces, the more you realize that the
shoddy police work exhibited in Tulia--shady narc, iffy suspect IDs, a lack
of corroborating evidence--is more the norm than an aberration. But despite
the mountain of doubt raised about Coleman, Tulia prosecutor Terry McEachern
continues to stand by his narc, dismissing Coleman's lies about White as a
mistake.

In reality, it's a smoking gun. One that Jeff Blackburn, who represented
White, hopes will ultimately lead to the overturning of the other Tulia
convictions. To that end, he has created the Tulia Legal Defense Project and
is about to mount a campaign to get Texas Gov. Rick Perry to pardon those
convicted in the Tulia sting.

Blackburn's efforts have drawn support from a number of national
organizations, including the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored
People, the American Bar Assn. and the William Moses Kunstler Fund for
Racial Justice.

Perry should join them and pardon the Tulia defendants. And the rest of us
should take a harder look at the abuses being perpetrated in the name of the
war on drugs.