A NIGHT JUSTICE CAN'T FORGET

Regarding Alan Bean's Jan. 26 guest column, "Coleman shorts long arm
of the law," anyone who knows about the July 23, 1999 drug bust in the
town of Tulia, and the story behind it, realizes what a sad day in
history it was. Sixteen percent of a town's black population was
behind bars in one night.

The difficulty of maintaining an honest government while fighting a
drug war was noted by the U.N. Drug Control Program in 1998: "In
systems where a member of the legislature or judiciary, earning only a
modest income, can easily gain the equivalent of some 20 months'
salary from a trafficker by making one 'favorable' decision, the
dangers of corruption are obvious."

In 1986, before mandatory minimums for crack offenses became
effective, the average federal drug offense sentence for blacks was 11
percent higher than for whites. Four years later, following the
implementation of harsher drug sentencing laws, the average federal
drug offense sentence was 49 percent higher for blacks. This has not
changed. A single narcotics agent, Thomas Rolland Coleman, scored 132
narcotics buys and the damage is still being felt. In many different
ways.

Derek Rea
Granite City, Ill.