Pubdate: Thu, 05 Oct 2000
Source: San Diego Union Tribune (CA)
Copyright: 2000 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.
Contact:  PO Box 120191, San Diego, CA, 92112-0191
Fax: (619) 293-1440
Website: http://www.uniontrib.com/
Forum: http://www.uniontrib.com/cgi-bin/WebX
Author: Pam Easton, Associated Press

TEXAS DRUG BUSTS RAISE QUESTIONS OF PREJUDICE, OFFICER'S CREDIBILITY

TULIA, Texas -- Kareem Abdul Jabbar White sat across a courtroom table from 
the Swisher County district attorney, hoping he'd be found innocent of drug 
charges but knowing the odds were against him.

Ten people tried in the previous 10 months, including his older brother and 
younger sister, had been convicted of delivering cocaine to the same 
undercover officer.

That officer, Tom Coleman, spent a year and a half building drug cases 
against 43 people in this West Texas farming community, which boasts the 
"richest land and the finest people."

All but three of those Coleman alleged sold him drugs are black.

District Attorney Terry McEachern says racial prejudice played no role in 
the busts, which resulted in 17 guilty pleas and 11 guilty verdicts. White 
was convicted in early September of one count of delivering a controlled 
substance after a two-day trial, and sentenced to 60 years in prison.

But the Texas American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in federal 
court Friday alleging civil rights violations, conspiracy and 
discrimination "intended to accomplish the forbidden aim of cleansing Tulia 
of its black population."

The suit was filed on behalf of Yul Bryant, who was arrested in July 1999 
for allegedly selling cocaine. His case was dismissed after McEachern 
learned that Coleman was not certain he had bought cocaine from Bryant.

Now others are coming forward, claiming they were unjustly prosecuted.

LaWanda Smith, who pleaded guilty to one count of delivering a controlled 
substance, says she only did so because she was afraid of taking her 
chances on a trial. But she says she never sold drugs to Coleman.

"I have never met the guy," she said. "Not ever."

Coleman came to Tulia, midway between Lubbock and Amarillo, in late 1997. 
Tulia has just under 5,000 residents, about 250 of them black.

He was a Texas Ranger's son and had been a Pecos police officer and Cochran 
County sheriff's deputy, but he left law enforcement in 1996 under 
questionable circumstances.

He worked as a welder before being hired in Tulia in 1998 as an undercover 
drug agent for the Swisher County Sheriff's Department.

"I told him to go wherever his investigation led him," Swisher County 
Sheriff Larry Stewart testified.

Critics suggest that Stewart guided Coleman to target specific residents.

"Sheriff Stewart told me that he had a list of black people in town he 
wanted investigated," Mattie White, a prison guard who is Kareem White's 
mother, said in an affidavit. "(He) said that this was how all of these 
people had come to be indicted."

At Kareem White's trial, his lawyer, Dwight McDonald, asked Stewart if he 
remembered telling Mattie White that more black residents were arrested 
because "black people do drugs in the streets and the parks and white 
people do them in their home."

"That is something that might have been said," Stewart answered.

On July 23, 1999, a drug task force pulled suspects from their beds and 
paraded them, still in their nightclothes, across the courthouse lawn in 
front of television cameras.

Coleman took great pride in the bust.

"I walked in there with 'police' written across my vest and pulled off my 
mask and they just stared at me with their mouths open," he told the 
Amarillo Globe-News. "A lot of them just kept saying, 'I can't believe 
you're a cop. No way you're a cop.' It was just perfect."

The Texas Narcotic Control Program later named him "Outstanding Lawman of 
the Year."

Coleman, who is working undercover elsewhere in Texas, refused to be 
interviewed by The Associated Press.

Not everyone thought Coleman should be a cop.

In a 1996 letter to the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement Officer 
Standards and Education, Cochran County Sheriff Ken Burke said Coleman quit 
without notice in the middle of a shift, leaving behind debts and a patrol 
car parked in his driveway.

Burke said he had to garnish Coleman's wages for back child support.

"It is in my opinion that an officer should uphold the law," Burke wrote. 
"Mr. Coleman should not be in law enforcement, if he is going to do people 
the way he did this town (Morton)."

Cochran County authorities filed charges of theft and abuse of power 
against Coleman, about five months into his undercover assignment. The 
charge was dismissed after he paid $6,950 in retribution.

In addition, Coleman's ex-girlfriend, Carla Bowerman, complained in 
November 1996 to Marion County authorities that Coleman constantly called 
and drove by her home. She didn't pursue charges, but wanted the complaint 
on file "in case he . . . causes trouble."

The judge in White's trial, State District Judge Jack Miller, refused to 
allow the allegations about Coleman into evidence.

He did permit Burke and a prosecutor from Fort Stockton to testify at 
White's trial that they knew Coleman to be "untruthful." But Sheriff 
Stewart and a number of other officers followed, swearing to Coleman's honesty.

White's trial was a "judicial lynching," said Texas ACLU executive director 
Will Harrell. "I haven't ever seen such a clear case of prosecutorial and 
police misconduct."

But McEachern remains satisfied with Coleman's role in the drug busts.

"If I didn't have complete confidence that the law had not been broken and 
that he was not telling the truth, then I would be the first one to dismiss 
all of these cases," McEachern said.

Several defendants accepted plea bargains after the first few trials 
resulted in prison terms of up to 99 years.

Attorney Erick Willard said he advised two clients to accept a deal 
"because they did not believe and I did not believe they could get a fair 
hearing . . . and that is a sad statement."
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jo-D