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| Drug War Task Forces Run Amok |
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Posted by FoM on April 16, 2002 at 08:11:36 PT By Arianna Huffington Source: Arizona Daily Star 
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 15 percent of the town's black population. And now the dismissal of charges last week against Tonya White, one of the final two Tulia defendants, has finally kicked open the door on the dubious nature of the entire Tulia operation while casting a light on 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 away 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 coworkers, Coleman was even arrested for theft in the middle of the Tulia operation but, amazingly, was still allowed to continue his undercover work. But this story is about more than one small town and one bad cop, it's about drug task forces allowed to run wild. An estimated 1,000 of these autonomous special units are operating nationwide. They came into widespread use in the 1980s as a way of combating America's growing drug problem but have morphed into the rampaging mad dogs of the drug war, operating with very 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 on 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 since its inception. Making matters even worse is that 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 mindset 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. 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. "Everybody's talking about Tom Coleman," says Barbara Markham, a former task force agent turned whistle blower. "Well, there are whole task forces of Tom Colemans out there." A very scary thought, given an undercover cop's ability to send someone to jail for life solely on his word. In Tulia, Coleman's word led to the conviction of 42 people, 16 of whom are still in jail serving sentences of up to 435 years. But despite the mountain of doubt raised about Coleman, the Tulia prosecutor Terry McEachern continues to stand by his narc - dismissing Coleman's lies about Tonya White as a mistake. In reality, it's not a mistake - it's a smoking gun. One that Jeff Blackburn, who represented Tonya 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 the victims of the Tulia sting. Blackburn's efforts have drawn support from a number of national organizations, including the NAACP, the American Bar Association and the William Moses Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice. It's time for Perry to join them and pardon the Tulia defendants, and for the rest of us to take a much harder look at the abuses being perpetrated in the name of the war on drugs. * Arianna Huffington is a columnist with Tribune Media Services. Source: Arizona Daily Star (AZ) Related Articles: Tulia Rally Seeks Sensible Policy Tulia Rally To Mark '99 Drug Sting Panhandle Town's Drug War Reveals Disparity Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help |
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| Comment #5 posted by DdC on April 16, 2002 at 18:23:48 PT |
| The Joseph McNamara Collection http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/debate/mcn/mcntoc.htm cops against the drug war police chiefs question merit of drug policy Bonus Payment To Informant Draws Criticism Fully Informed Jury Association November FAMM VCL- Lawyers and Judges against the drug war Release Petition I LOST MY FREEDOM Linx The Real Price of Prisons [ Post Comment ] |
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Comment #4 posted by Dan B on April 16, 2002 at 17:17:12 PT:
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| When I did the search you suggested, I quickly found a page called "CopCrimes" ( http://www.copcrimes.com ). When I clicked on it, it was not available. When a prominent site is suddenly no longer there, especially if it deals with a "controversial" subject (that is, one the authorities would rather you not know about), you can bet that the reason that site is down is hacking. The federal government reportedly has in its employ agents whose job it is to specifically target such sites and bring them down. Let's see how long it takes for CopCrimes to be back in operation. They have information pages on criminal activity by cops for every state in the country. Dan B [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #3 posted by xxdr_zombiexx on April 16, 2002 at 15:13:21 PT |
| I ran a search for "sheriff" + "corruption on yahoo yesterday...Unbelieveable the stuff that comes back: I cxould not make this much stuff up. I suggest you do the same - at your liesure, of course - and also search for WORMSCAN... I'd like to update a famous Tip O'Niel quote : All police states are local. NOTE: Kubby was arrested today in Canada by RCMP and a quiet plain clothed white man. Similar to this scenario.... Its on. [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #2 posted by theoffspring1 on April 16, 2002 at 10:06:58 PT |
| I thought America was about Freedom but from what I see America is a "Police State". [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #1 posted by mayan on April 16, 2002 at 09:31:09 PT |
| The war on drugs was initially created by racists & continues to be perpetrated by racists to this day. Coleman should be the one behind bars, not those who he framed. All of this went down while the Shrub was Governor of Texas. These losers will meet justice...in this world or the next. It would be a whole lot nicer to see it in this lifetime though. Either way,I wouldn't want to be them! [ Post Comment ] |
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