Texas Drug Task Forces Ride Off Into the Sunset

[KC]

18-years and those guys in Texas barely put a dent in the drugs coming into America from Texas.

Waste of time and money!

[Shuftin]

The 18-year ride of the Texas drug task forces is at an end. The task forces, composed of police from multiple agencies working together to wage the drug war, have run out of credibility after tens of thousands of arrests, mostly of small-time offenders, and endless scandals -- most notably, but by no means only, the Tulia affair. Now they are out of money, too. In a little noticed move, late last year Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) shifted the focus of state-controlled federal Justice Assistance Grants from the task forces to other areas, most notably to a program called Operation Linebacker, which will concentrate on stopping the drug traffic along the Mexican border.


good riddance to
this bunch of cowboys
"It definitely hurts," said Allen Helton, executive director of the Texas Narcotics Officers Association. "The task forces are no longer getting funding from the governor's office," he told DRCNet.

That was only the final blow to the increasingly beleaguered task forces. At their peak, Texas boasted 51 of the regional task forces, employing some 700 officers to wage full-time war on drug users and the drug traffic. But after Gov. Perry took control of the federal grant purse strings and centralized the disbursal of task force funds in the state Department of Public Safety in 2002, making task force commanders answer to Austin if they wanted the money, their numbers began to decline. By this spring, they were down to 22, and since then, commanders have been announcing the dissolution of task forces on what seems like a weekly basis. Only one, based in Wichita Falls, has publicly announced plans to continue.

"This should send a loud message to police and the public that we do have the ability to rein in law enforcement and hold police accountable and create significant reforms," said Will Harrell, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, an organization that played a key role in the years-long battle to rein in the task forces. "In the beginning of this struggle, nobody thought we could do it, but we have, and this is just one example of the power we can wield."

"This represents the culmination of years of work and activism by more than a dozen groups and hundreds of people across Texas in response to the Tulia and Hearne debacles," said Scott Henson, director of the Texas ACLU's Police Accountability Project and author of the Texas criminal justice blog "Grits for Breakfast." "It is a victory for people who oppose abusive police practices and think the drug war is out of control," he told DRCNet.



While dismay around the task forces' cowboyish behavior and proclivity for arresting black and brown people for petty drug crimes had been festering for years, it was the Tulia scandal that got the ball moving. There, in a case that garnered national attention, a single lawman working for the Panhandle Narcotics Task Force managed to bust more than 40 people, almost all of them black, on powder cocaine distribution charges despite having no more evidence than his own word. Dozens went to prison after what were in effect kangaroo court trials before a state and national mobilization managed to turn the tables and expose the injustice. In the end, the Tulia defendants were pardoned, the agent was convicted of perjury, and the reputation of the task forces was irreparably damaged.

Building on the dismay and disgust around Tulia, the Texas ACLU announced it had discovered "another Tulia" in Hearne, Texas, where a task force informant admitted lying in a case where the local task force had arrested 28 black men. In 2001, thanks to prodding from the Texas ACLU, the legislature passed a bill required civilian informants to have corroborating evidence in drug stings. The measure would not have prevented Tulia, but it would have prevented Hearne.

"In most places, these issues emerge around race, and that was certainly part of it in Texas, but the issues of police misconduct and bad police practices have been more central here in Texas," said Henson. "This really picked up steam after Tulia, when even the Texas legislature began viewing those tactics as indefensible."

In fact, the Texas House voted four different times since then to get rid of the task forces, but the Senate would not go along. It did go along with last year's bill that said the task forces had to comply with Department of Public Safety rules or lose their funding.

"Most of them chose to shut down at that point rather than comply," said Henson.

The end of the task forces does not mean Texas local law enforcement is going to ignore drug law violations. While the 700 task force members are gone from the task forces -- some laid off, some doing other police work, and some continuing to do drug law enforcement in single agency narcotics divisions -- the drug laws remain on the books. But where the task forces would do things like arrest crack smokers to drive up their numbers to ensure more funding next year, Gov. Perry's redirection of the federal funds means less emphasis on drug users and more emphasis on distribution rings.

"What this really represents is a shift in focus toward large trafficking organizations and away from low-level users and addicts," said Henson. "When you shift the money to the border, it's to go after the cartels, while the task forces would go after those low-level people. They would do things like send a confidential informant out to smoke crack with some other people, and when they would run out, he would pull out a $100 bill and say 'Let's get some more,' and when a friend takes it and brings back some rocks, he would get arrested as a drug dealer. That boosted their numbers and sent lots of people to prison, but did little to actually stop the drug trade."

"The end of the task forces puts 700 narcotics agents out of business. This will unquestionably have an impact on the ground," said Harrell. "Those task forces were responsible for thousands of arrests each year, 14,000 people last year alone."

[WaTcHeR]

08.29.2006 - On Monday, Kareem White, one of 35 Tulia drug defendants pardoned by Texas Gov. Rick Perry three years ago, got the first half of $100,000 from the state for being wrongly imprisoned.

In all, 20 residents of the tiny Panhandle town that was rocked by a drug sting gone wrong have filed claims of more than $1.3 million against the state. However, 10 of them are in a legal limbo that could delay — or prevent — them from collecting for the prison time they served.

Almost 50 people, most of them black and poor, were arrested in the town of 5,000 people during an early morning raid in the summer of 1999. They were arrested on felony drug charges on the word of one undercover officer whose testimony could not be substantiated later.

Charges against some were dropped, but 35 were convicted or pleaded guilty in the face of vigorous prosecutions. They were later pardoned by Perry.

At issue now are 10 former defendants who were already on probation or parole for other crimes when they were wrongly accused in 1999 of selling cocaine and who were accused of violating their parole or probation because of the drug arrests.

State law allows people who are wrongly convicted and serve jail time to receive compensation from the state — $25,000 per year. But it prohibits paying a person for being wrongly imprisoned on one crime if he or she is serving a sentence concurrently on another charge — in this case, the probation or parole violations.

Brent Hamilton, who is representing 19 of the Tulia clients, said it is unfair to penalize people who might never have violated their parole or probation and gone to jail if not for the trumped-up drug charges.

"These people were on probation or parole and were doing fine when they were (wrongly) arrested," Hamilton said.

Earlier this month, Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn, whose job includes paying claims against the state, asked Attorney General Greg Abbott how to handle those 10 claims, which account for almost half of the $1.3 million.

"Although I am fully satisfied that a great injustice occurred in Tulia and that equity clearly justifies full payment, there is a statutory issue that I am compelled to present to you for your opinion," Strayhorn wrote Abbott.

Strayhorn framed the issue around the case of Jason Paul Fry, who was serving a probated term for a drug-possession conviction when he was arrested in the Tulia raid.

"Technically, this statutory language appears to disqualify Mr. Fry from entitlement to any compensation," Strayhorn wrote. "However, the inequity is that it was his wrongful arrest and conviction for the Tulia drug charge that caused his probation . . . to be revoked."

The Tulia defendants who were convicted of selling small amounts of cocaine received sentences of up to 90 years, and many served up to four years before they were pardoned.

For any of the 20 claims to be paid, District Attorney Wally Hatch was required by state law to write letters to the comptroller explaining that the defendants were legally entitled to the money.

Hatch, who became the prosecutor for Tulia six years after the raid, said the controversy — and the national spotlight that it brought — still burns some residents.

"I think the general consensus is: There may have been some mistakes made, but there were some crimes committed as well," Hatch said.

In his letters, Hatch avoided saying anyone was innocent and just noted that the people filing the claims had been pardoned by Perry.

The undercover officer who was responsible for the bogus drug charges worked alone and used no audio or video surveillance. No drugs were found.

Some groups charged that the raid was racially motivated.

Hamilton, whose law firms have represented some of the Tulia defendants since the initial drug raid, said he understands Hatch's reluctance.

Hamilton said that parts of Tulia might have had a drug problem but that "things were exaggerated" in the investigation.

"It's sort of like driving 80 miles per hour in a 70 miles-per-hour zone, and the trooper wrote you a ticket for 100 miles per hour," Hamilton said. "Unfortunately it resulted in problems for the defendants, for the taxpayers, and for the district attorney. It's been tough on everyone out here."

www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/08/29/29tulia.html?UrAuth=`NYNUOaN]UbTTUWUXUWUZT[UTUWU]U`UZU`U[UcTYWYWZV&urcm=y