NAACP, ACLU join forces over Texas drug bust

New Crisis, The, Jan/Feb 2001

The New York Times came to Tulia. So did CNN, 20/20 Downtown, and the Los Angeles Times. For the past 18 months and counting, the tiny Texas town has attracted national media attention because of what happened there in the wee hours of July 23, 1999.

Tuha, a farming community of 4,500 in northwest Texas between Amarillo and Lubbock, had a drug problem. From 1995 to 1998, 41 people had been arrested on drug charges, and the public schools began mandatory student drug testing in 2000. In January 1998, the Amarillo-based Panhandle Regional Narcotics Task Force (PRNTF) joined Talia in its local war on drugs. Under the auspices of PRNTF, Swisher County Sheriff Larry Stewart hired Tom Coleman, a former deputy sheriff of Cochran County, to work as an undercover investigator of the town's drug scene. Coleman, a European American, seemed to ingratiate himself well with Tulia's townsfolk. Coleman's work-in which he purchased $20,000 worth of narcotics from unsuspecting Tulians-provided the ammunition to put the drug suppliers behind bars.

On July 23, 1999, 43 people alleged to have sold drugs to Tom Coleman were arrested. Coleman was subsequently honored by the state as Lawman of the Year.

Yet, what seemed to be a small town's valiant effort to drive drugs from its community was rife with unanswered questions and apparent inequities. Tulia's population is 48 percent white, 44 percent Latino, and 7 percent African American. But 40 of the 43 people arrested in July were black. The remaining three accused-two whites and one Latino-were closely tied to the African American community, including William Cash Love, a white man with a biracial child.

Those convicted received hefty sentences, some exacerbated by previous convictions. Love received the stiffest sentence: 434 years. And because Coleman was never accompanied during his investigation, nor used cameras or recording devices, the convictions hinged on his word alone. Court transcripts, however, show that Coleman's testimony was inconsistent and contradictory. Officials with the local American Civil Liberties Union were quick to notice the racial disparity and shaky evidence.

"The arrests in Tulia were a gross miscarriage of justice and a blatant, racially motivated act" tantamount to "the ethnic cleansing of young male blacks from Tulia," said Will Harrell, the ACLU's executive director in Texas.

Last Sept. 29, the ACLU filed a $2 million lawsuit against Coleman, Stewart, and District Attorney Terry McEachern on behalf of Yul Bryant, an African American imprisoned for seven months for drug possession. Bryant was eventually released when Coleman was unable to confirm that he had ever actually bought drugs from Bryant.

The NAACP joined the ACLU in its lawsuit, challenging local authorities who had arrested 10 percent of Tulia's black population in one fell swoop.

"To have 40 [African American] adults . . . that have allegedly engaged in drug trafficking would suggest something to you about Tula that we know is not true," asserted Gary Bledsoe, president of the NAACP's Texas State Conference, "We don't think Talia is the drug haven of the world."

Last Oct. 13, both organizations submitted a joint complaint to the U.S. Department of Justice, arguing that PRNTF-through Coleman-had violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and several constitutional amendments, and should therefore be denied federal funding. The Justice Department responded on Oct. 26 by opening a federal investigation in Tulia.

Though the legal battle is only beginning in Tulia, it cannot move fast enough to heal the rending that Coleman's investigation caused Tulia's black community Dozens of children are parentless as their parents languish in prison. Other blacks wonder if this is the last they've seen of this kind of undercover work. As one resident put it, the feeling among Tulia's African Americans is that Stewart, Coleman, and McEachern "dedared war on this community."