Pubdate: Sun, 29 Jun 2003 Source: Amarillo Globe-News (TX) Copyright: 2003 Amarillo Globe-News Contact: http://amarillonet.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/13 Author: Charles Kiker Note: Charles Kiker of Tulia is retired clergyman. Bookmarks: http://www.mapinc.org/tulia.htm (Tulia, Texas) http://www.mapinc.org/source/Amarillo+Globe-News (Amarillo Globe-News) PROVERBIAL ELEPHANT THREATENS TO TRAMPLE TULIA TULIA - There's an elephant in the room, and nobody wants to acknowledge it. Globe-News Editorial Page Editor John Kanelis gave Texas lawmakers a well-deserved rap on the knuckles for not speaking out on the bill to free the Tulia 13. This travesty happened in the backyard of Sens. Teel Bivins and Bob Duncan, and Rep. Warren Chisum. Yet they have maintained a stoic public silence on the issue. Bivins and Duncan committed a much more egregious wrong in their failure to support Senate Bill 515. That bill, in its original form, would have required corroborating evidence in addition to the testimony of an undercover police officer in narcotics cases. As it was amended, it only requires that the judge inform the jury in cases where the sole evidence is the testimony of an undercover agent. But even in this weakened form, prosecutors and police unions fought the bill tooth and nail. The House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee considered a similar bill. Police Officers Walter Redmon and Donald DeBlanc of the Houston Police Department, and Tom Gayler, Deputy Executive Director of the Texas Municipal Police Association, testified against that bill. They voiced the opinion that corroborating evidence is relatively simple in a sting involving kingpin dealers, but extremely difficult with nickel-and-dime street dealers. And, they added, "It's with the nickel and dimers that we make most of our cases." Sen. Juan Hinojosa, sponsor of SB 515, needed the support of 21 senators to get the bill to the Senate floor. He could only get commitments from 13 of his colleagues - 11 Democrats and Republican Sens. Bill Ratliff and John Carona. Again, our local senators were silent in the wings, and SB 515 died an ignominious death, never seeing the light of day on the Senate floor. The editorial stance of the Globe-News seems to be that basically the criminal justice system in Texas works well. It just needs a little tweaking, as in corroborating evidence. Some kind of requirement for corroboration is desperately needed. We simply cannot trust the police to police themselves, especially in undercover operations. After all, undercover agents come into town on false pretenses, often with an assumed name. Tom Coleman represented himself as T. J. Dawson, and had a fake ID. He was a liar up front. Yet he was supposed to be turned into a paragon of truth when he sat in the witness chair! But the system needs more than tweaking. It needs a major overhaul. There's no problem with corroboration with the kingpin dealers. It's the nickel-and-dimers where it poses a problem - and that's where "we make most of our cases." Apparently that's where they want to do, and where they plan to continue to make most of their cases - with or without corroboration. The Tulia sting was no aberration; it was an extreme example of business as usual. Such an extreme example is not likely to happen again soon. Nobody wants the negative attention Tulia has received. Nobody wants the financial repercussions that Swisher County has incurred and will continue to incur in the future. So nobody is going to arrest and charge 46 people out of a small community without having better evidence than the uncorroborated testimony of a rogue cop. But business as usual can continue. They can continue to pick up poor people in poor communities, one or two at a time, with or without corroborating evidence, and nobody will pay any attention. The way the war on drugs is conducted is the elephant in the room that nobody wants to acknowledge. The drug soldiers can pick up nickel-and-dime street dealers until hell freezes over and still not win the war on drugs. Arrest one, or 46, street dealers, and there will be others standing in line to take their places. The war on drugs is a misnomer. It is a war on people, especially on poor people, and more especially on people of color. It's time for a major rethinking of drug policy. It's time to start treating drug abuse as a medical problem rather than a criminal problem. And that is much more than tweaking the system. It's time to acknowledge the elephant in the room, and kick him out, before his odoriferous presence further fouls our system of justice. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake