Pubdate: Sun, 28 Jan 2001
Source: St. Paul Pioneer Press (MN)
Copyright: 2001 St. Paul Pioneer Press
Contact:  345 Cedar St., St. Paul, MN 55101
Website: http://www.pioneerplanet.com/
Forum: http://www.pioneerplanet.com/watercooler/
Author: Paul Duggan, Washington Post
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/tulia.htm (Tulia, Texas)

SMALL-TOWN DRUG BUST SEEN AS EITHER OVERDO 'CLEANUP' OR 'RACIAL
CLEANSING'

TULIA, Texas -- By midday July 23, 1999, Tulia was abuzz with news of
the biggest drug bust ever in this Panhandle prairie town.

The jail was packed with suspects rounded up after a grand jury indicted
43 men and women for allegedly selling small amounts of cocaine to a
sheriff's deputy in an undercover operation. Most townspeople, though
not all, applauded the arrests.

"I remember thinking, 'Well, good; it's about time,' " said Debra Earl,
47, a school system employee who later served on a jury in one of the
cases.

Earl is white, like most of the 5,000 residents of this community an
hour's drive south of Amarillo.

"Drugs were getting bad," said another white resident, Daryl Tucker, 48,
who runs a company that builds bowling alleys. "Our town as a whole sort
of told the sheriff, 'We need to clean up these drugs.' And he's been
doing a fine job of it, I think."

Black residents, however, had a far different reaction to the 18-month
drug sting, which is the focus of a lawsuit by the American Civil
Liberties Union of Texas and an FBI investigation ordered by the Justice
Department's civil rights division.

Of the 43 people arrested, 40 were black -- about 17 percent of Tulia's
small black population. Nearly every black person in town had a relative
or friend on the indictment list. The ACLU lawsuit, filed in September,
alleges that many of the cases were built on "false testimony and
fabricated evidence." In a complaint to the Justice Department last
fall, the ACLU called the undercover operation "an ethnic cleansing of
young male blacks from Tulia."

"If you ask me, they just wanted to take whatever was left of the black
folks in town and run them all out, and they used the law to do it,"
said Cleveland Henderson, 25, who lost his job as a dishwasher after
being indicted. Like others, Henderson, who is on probation, said he was
falsely accused but pleaded guilty in a deal with the prosecutor because
he feared getting a stiff prison term if convicted at a trial.

Only five of the 43 people indicted had prior drug convictions,
according to court records. Most were charged with multiple counts of
selling one to four grams of cocaine to the undercover deputy, who
alleged in many cases that the deals occurred near schools or public
parks, increasing the potential penalty. The ACLU said there were no
photos, independent witnesses or other evidence in the cases -- just the
testimony of the white deputy, who worked unsupervised on the streets.

Eight men were convicted at trials in Tulia last year by all-white or
mostly white juries, and given penitentiary terms of 12, 20, 20, 25, 40,
45, 60 and 99 years, said Jeff Blackburn, an ACLU lawyer. Of those who
made plea deals to avoid similarly long prison stretches, 14 were locked
up. The stiffest sentence was eight years.

The ACLU lawsuit alleges false imprisonment and other misdeeds by
Swisher County Sheriff Larry Stewart, District Attorney Terry McEachern
and the undercover deputy, Thomas Coleman, all of whom are white.
Through their attorneys, the three men denied the allegations in the
lawsuit and the Justice Department complaint.

Coleman, who was hired by Stewart to conduct the sting, is now working
elsewhere in Texas and could not be located for comment.

Blackburn and other lawyers said some of the suspects acknowledged
selling cocaine to Coleman, but in much smaller quantities than alleged
and at times and places different from those sworn to by the deputy.
Others who were arrested contend they were falsely charged because they
are friends or relatives of people who met with Coleman.

In all but a few cases, Coleman alleged that the suspects sold him one
to four grams of powder cocaine, punishable by up to 20 years in state
prison. Those who acknowledged dealing with Coleman said they sold him
rocks of crack, a cheaper form of cocaine, weighing less than a gram,
which carries a jail term of up to 18 months.

"The drugs here were crack and marijuana," said Smith, echoing others in
Tulia's black community. "I don't even know what powder looks like."

A tiny rock of crack can be ground up and mixed with baking soda or
other cutting agents to produce more than a gram of powder. Under Texas
law, prison sentences in cocaine cases are based on the weight of the
product, no matter how diluted it is.

In the black community, Smith said, old friends who used to socialize
nightly on corners and around the basketball court at Conner Park seldom
get together any more.

"We have to stay away from each other or else we'll get our probation
revoked," she said.
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MAP posted-by: Doc-Hawk