-Caveat Lector- The Heat Is on a Texas Town After the Arrests of 40 Blacks By JIM YARDLEY ULIA, Tex., Oct. 4 — On the morning of July 23, 1999, Billy Wafer, a forklift driver, was swept up in the biggest drug sting in local history: In this town of only 4,500 people, 43 suspects were arrested on charges of selling small amounts of cocaine. In some cases, hometown juries later meted out sentences ranging from 20 years to more than 300 years. In Tulia, an isolated place ringed by cotton farms and cattle ranches on the high plains of the Texas panhandle, local officials declared the operation a stunning success. In all, 22 of the defendants were sent to prison while others received probation. The undercover agent at the center of the operation, Tom Coleman, was even named by the state as lawman of the year. But more than a year later, an operation once hailed as a victory in the war on drugs now has civil rights groups and local minorities asking whether it was really a war on blacks. All but three of the 43 defendants were black, an enormous percentage considering blacks make up less than 10 percent of the town's population. In fact, roughly 12 percent of the town's black population was arrested. The doubts raised about the racial makeup of the group arrested are compounded by contentions that the investigation was flimsy at best. The sole evidence in nearly every case was the word of Mr. Coleman, whose own character had come under criticism in the past. There were no videotapes or wiretaps or, in most cases, any corroborating witnesses. "They declared war on this community," said Sammy Barrow, a black resident with four relatives who were arrested. "You either were going to get a long term in the penitentiary or you were going to get enough of a deterrent to get out of here." So now Tulia itself is on trial: last week, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on behalf of a defendant whose case was dismissed in February, apparently because of a false identification. The suit accuses local officials of singling out blacks to run them out of town. Next week, the A.C.L.U. plans to file a civil rights complaint with the Justice Department seeking to revoke financing for the agencies that ran the sting. The reaction among most whites here has been unflinching support of the operation and local officials. Public intolerance for drugs is unquestioned in Tulia; the local school system is one of a handful in the area that mandate random drug testing for students, a policy that is being challenged in court. The sheriff and the district attorney, who defend Mr. Coleman's credibility, also deny that the sting was racially motivated or that the town is biased. "This is a good community, and I care a lot about everybody here," said Swisher County's sheriff, Larry Stewart, who was reluctant to speak in much detail because of the lawsuit. "There has been a lot more made of this than is true." Like many places, Tulia is not immune to drugs. In 1997 and 1998, a total of nine people were arrested on felony drug charges here. In the previous two years, 32 were arrested in another sting by the Tulia police. Some black residents say the town does have a cluster of crack cocaine users who buy their drugs in larger cities like Amarillo or Plainview. And several of the defendants had prior drug arrests, including Donald Smith, who admitted on the stand that he had sold crack to the undercover agent but who vehemently denied using or selling the more expensive powdered cocaine. But Mr. Wafer, the forklift driver, contends, "there's no big drug problem here." "Can you see 43 dealers surviving in this small town?" he said. "There would be murders and everything. Everybody would have to be doing it." Mr. Coleman said Mr. Wafer, 42, sold him cocaine at a local convenience store. But Mr. Wafer's employer testified that Mr. Wafer was at work at the time Mr. Coleman said the drug deal took place. Mr. Wafer produced his timecards. A judge refused to dismiss the cocaine charges but decided there was insufficient evidence to revoke Mr. Wafer's probation on a 1990 marijuana charge. His trial is pending. The drug sting began in 1998 when Mr. Coleman, the son of a Texas ranger, was hired by Sheriff Stewart to run an undercover operation in Tulia under the supervision of the Panhandle Regional Narcotics Trafficking Task Force in Amarillo. Mr. Coleman had been a sheriff's deputy and a jailer in other Texas counties but was working as a welder when he got the job here. Mr. Coleman underwent training with the Drug Enforcement Administration then spent more than a year undercover in Tulia, the largest town in Swisher County. Officials said Mr. Coleman, who is white, got to know many of Tulia's blacks with the help of a black co-worker at a cattle auction where he had gotten a job. Both Sheriff Stewart and the local district attorney, Terry McEachern, agree that drugs are sold and consumed by whites and Hispanics in Tulia. But, they said, Mr. Coleman could not make any headway with those groups. Critics say Mr. Coleman operated with almost no oversight. His reports were sometimes no more than a paragraph, sometimes with names misspelled. In some cases, Sheriff Stewart said, Mr. Coleman asked him for photographs of people he considered to be suspects; some black residents wonder if Mr. Coleman used the pictures in order to describe them in his later reports. The initial cases were tried at the Swisher County courthouse in Tulia. Seven cases went to trial, each ending in a stiff sentence. Usually, the charges involved the sale of between one gram and four grams of cocaine, a second-degree felony in Texas. But the penalties were increased on many of the charges because Mr. Coleman said the deals had occurred near a school or public park. Some defendants who had no prior convictions were sentenced to 20 years in prison. Cash Love, one of the few white defendants, was convicted of several counts of selling cocaine and sentenced to more than 300 years. Some blacks in town believe he was treated harshly because prosecutors did not want the operation to seem racist and because they wanted to make an example of Mr. Love, who has many black friends and a mixed-race child. After the initial trials, other defendants began to plead guilty for reduced sentences or probation. Mr. McEachern regards these pleas as a validation of the operation. But many blacks say the defendants pleaded guilty because they did not believe they could get a fair trial here. The town's two newspapers had carried the story of the arrests on the front page, with the Tulia Sentinel, which is now defunct, describing the suspects as "drug traffickers" and "known dealers." Television stations, tipped by the sheriff, had filmed the suspects as they were taken to jail after the sunrise arrests. "He paraded those people before the cameras with their skivvies and their hair uncombed like they had caught animals," said Gary Gardner, one of the few whites in town to publicly criticize the drug sting. Despite the pretrial publicity, local judges denied motions for a change of venue. "Jurors are very, very conscientious in Tulia," Mr. McEachern said, defending the fairness of the trials. The cases drew more scrutiny by the news media after Van Williamson, a court-appointed lawyer, began to look into Mr. Coleman's past. In 1996, Mr. Coleman had abruptly left the Sheriff's Department in Cochran County, Tex., leaving behind more than $6,000 in debts to local businesses. Sheriff Ken Burke of Cochran County wrote a letter to the state agency overseeing officer standards saying, "Mr. Coleman should not be in law enforcement, if he is going to do people the way he did this town." Mr. Williamson also found documents from Mr. Coleman's custody battle for his two children that raised questions about his character. In interviews with social workers, some acquaintances and former co-workers at the Pecos County Sheriff's Department, where Mr. Coleman worked in the mid-90's, described him as obsessed with guns, hot-tempered and "a compulsive liar." Ultimately, Mr. Coleman's problems in Cochran County resulted in misdemeanor charges of theft and abuse of official position involving gasoline from county pumps that was not paid for. Sheriff Stewart said he learned of Mr. Coleman's past problems about six months after the investigation had gotten under way and placed him on a week's vacation to clear up the matter. Mr. Coleman resumed his undercover work after paying off his debts with money provided by his mother, Sheriff Stewart said. Mr. Coleman, who is now working undercover in North Texas, declined to comment, on the advice of his lawyer, because of the pending civil lawsuit. He did talk about one case shortly after the arrests but before any of the resulting controversy. "I hate dope, and I hate dope dealers," Mr. Coleman told the Amarillo Globe-News in 1999. "I figured that doing this, I could maybe put a few dealers in jail before they came across the path of somebody's kid." The information about Mr. Coleman's past was withheld in all but one of the Tulia trials. In that case, the defense brought up Mr. Coleman's troubles, and prosecutors called several Texas Rangers, who said he was a good, reliable officer. Jeff Blackburn, the Amarillo lawyer handling the A.C.L.U. lawsuit, said the defendant in that case, Yul Bryant, had been accused by Mr. Coleman of selling $160 in cocaine. In his report, Mr. Coleman initially described Mr. Bryant, who is short and balding, as a tall black man "with bushy type hair." A later report amended the description to a "BM (black male) with short type hair." Mr. Bryant spent six months in jail before a judge dismissed the case. "The question becomes, `Can you put anyone in question in prison based on the word of this guy without corroboration?' " Mr. Blackburn asked. Now, attention on Tulia is growing. Groups like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the William Moses Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice have organized protest rallies. On Monday, competing rallies are scheduled, one by critics of the arrests, the other by supporters of local officials. Indeed, many white residents cannot believe an officer would fabricate cases. "I trust our officers," said Doris Ammburn, a local store clerk, "because if I can't, we're in pretty bad shape." <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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