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Tulia's black community was raided on July 23, 1999. The 40 blacks arrested constituted more than 10% of the local African-American population. The Texas ACLU and the local NAACP filed a federal civil suit claiming racial discrimination, which is pending. But the bust has also energized and focused the Texas drug reform and social justice communities, much to the chagrin of some Swisher County residents and Texas drug warriors alike. |
The bust led to convictions based on flimsy evidence: the
uncorroborated testimony of the lone undercover agent, Tom Coleman,
whose questionable past was barred from discussion during the
trials. Court watchers say no drugs, money or weapons were seized
in the roundup, and there is no information to back up the undercover
agent's word that he bought drugs from the accused. Eleven of
those arrested in Tulia were found guilty and another 17 accepted
plea agreements.
"What happened in Tulia is a horrible embarrassment to my
profession because this guy followed no procedures of a normal
police officer," said former Michigan policeman Howard Wooldridge,
50, of Fort Worth, who attended the rally on his one-eyed horse,
Misty. "Sloppy is being generous," continued Wooldridge
describing Coleman. "A number of the accused shouldn't be
in prison. It was racial profiling to the max."
Many folks in Tulia supported local law enforcement then and
still support it now. They reelected both the sheriff and the
district attorney last year in the midst of the national attention
focused on the town by allegations of racial bias in the bust,
and they have no problem with the harsh sentences handed down
to town "drug dealers." Yet, they wish all the bad
publicity would fade away, observers note with satisfaction.
That hasn't happened
yet. On July 22 a crowd numbering about 350 people, a third of
them white, rallied peacefully in a Tulia park on a Sunday night
to remember and protest this outrageous drug raid. People listened
to music and poetry readings, played basketball and ate hamburgers
and hot dogs as they waited for the speakers to take the stage
on a hot Texas night. The evening rally was part of a "Freedom
Ride" to Tulia that began in Austin at midnight Saturday.
A group of Tulia residents calling themselves Friends of Justice,
along with members of the state and national chapters of the
ACLU, the NAACP and League of United Latin American Citizens,
made the trip on two chartered buses.
"The struggle in Tulia is constant," said Will Harrell,
executive director of the Texas ACLU. "There are still 20
people in jail who are innocent of the crimes they are accused
of," Harrell told reporters. "This is madness. Innocent
people of color, who are poor, are being abused systematically.
Tulia has become a symbol of what's wrong with our drug policy.
The solution to bad policy requires a collective effort, and
every one of us counts." This police strategy is apparently
applied throughout Texas. Since the Tulia bust, at least eight
more instances of racially targeted drug busts have been reported
in the state. One instance was called Texoma, according to a
Texas prisoner who wrote the Razor Wire.
Police vehicles occasionally circled the block where the rally
was held. About 35 officers from the Department of Public Safety,
Texas Rangers, Swisher County Sheriff's Department and Tulia
police waited at police headquarters.
Terri Brookins, 20, said she thought the rally gave her husband,
Freddie Brookins Jr., one of the defendants, some encouragement.
She visited him at the prison in Brownsfield before attending
the rally. He is scheduled for parole in March and is appealing
his case. "He thinks it's a good idea to have this rally,"
she said.
The Texans had organized into the Austin-based Texas Network
of Reform Groups. The TNRG consists of the Drug Policy Forum
of Texas, Austin NORML, and Students for Sensible Drug Policy,
Indy Media Austin, plus hemp activists and associated independent
drug reformers.
Prominent organizer Charles Kiker is a retired Baptist minister
and Tulia resident who helped found Friends of Justice. He told
the Daily Texan, "When I read in the paper that 43 people
in the little town of Tulia had been arrested for selling powder
cocaine, I thought, boy, we've got a big drug problem in this
little town. My wife is quite a bit smarter than I am, and she
asked, 'If 43 people are selling drugs in Tulia, who are the
buyers?'"
The bust began to "smell bad" when Kiker realized 40
of those arrested were black, Kiker said. "Friends of Justice"
was the result. A barrier-breaking coalition of friends and relatives
of those arrested, religious workers and local justice advocates,
the Friends are "a faith-based community called together
to Do Justice, Love Mercy, and Walk Humbly, as both their mission
statement and their T-shirts note.
A number of national drug policy activists attended the Never
Again! rally, including Common Sense for Drug Policy's Kevin
Zeese, former drug war prisoner Dorothy Gaines, the Rev. Edwin
Sanders of Nashville's Metropolitan Interdenominational Church
and Mikki Norris, co-author of "Shattered Lives: Portraits
From America's Drug War." Coming a distance to be in attendance
was a delegation of Rockefeller drug law activists including
Teresa Aviles and Randy Credico from New York City, TNC's regional
leaders: Deitra Lied of El Paso, and Wava Porter-Kilby and Joe
Minella of Albuquerque, New Mexico traveled to Tulia, and Karen
Heikkala rode with those in Austin on the Freedom Bus.
Texas activists who addressed the rally include: Texas ACLU's
Harrell, Drug Policy Forum of Texas executive director Dr. G.
Alan Robison, DPFT president Jerry Epstein, TNRG's Tracey Hayes,
Reverend Sterling Lands of the Greater Calvary Baptist Church
in Northeast Austin and NAACP representatives. Amarillo chapter
head Alphonso Vaughan and Freddy Brookins, Sr., head of Tulia
NAACP told of forming their chapters in the aftermath of the
drug bust.
Robison noted later that Houston's media coverage "aside
from an occasional mention of the Freedom Ride prior to the rally,
was the first time to my knowledge that Tulia was ever mentioned
in a predominantly black publication in Houston, the weekly Houston
Times. It's important because the Houston Chronicle was the only
major daily in Texas that chose not to so much as mention the
Never Again! rally, and it was clearly the black community that
needed to hear about it."
The Tulia case inspired successful legislation this year in Austin.
A bill sponsored by Rep. Juan Hinojosa (D-McAllen) prohibits
Texans from being convicted of drug charges based solely on the
testimony of undercover police officers. "This bill was
supported by law officers across the state," Mr. Hinojosa
told reporters. "They don't want to convict just on the
word of an informant without corroboration."
A second law made officers' personnel files no longer exempt
from disclosure under certain circumstances. Harrell of the Texas
ACLU said more can be done to prevent bad drug cases from reaching
prosecution. His group has asked that the Texas House Committee
on Criminal Jurisprudence review regional narcotics task forces.
The ACLU has asked the Texas attorney general's office to investigate
whether racial profiling and civil rights abuses are part of
the drug task forces. The ACLU says that narcotics task forces
target minorities in low-income communities in order to bolster
their arrest numbers to gain grant money.
At time of press there was no response from attorney general
spokesman, Mark Heckmann, who was to review the request. Appeals
are pending in the drug cases. The ACLU and NAACP have filed
a federal lawsuit against some Swisher County officials, and
the Department of Justice is investigating.
It is summer in the Texas Panhandle, and little moves but the
wind across the plains. The Never Again! rally is certain to
raise some dust. "It's been pretty quiet in Tulia until
now, but after this rally we won't be quiet again about such
official abuse," said Rev. Kiker.
(Source: DRCNet and G. Alan Robison)
Friends of Justice
507 N. Donley Avenue Tulia, Texas 79088
www.drugsense.org/foj/
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Not in Tulia, not anywhere!"  Citizens converge on Swisher County Courthouse on the 2nd anniversary of the infamous Tulia drug sting of '99
 Reverend Edwin Sanders, challenges rally participants to remember Tulia and to bring an end to the war on drugs today. |
