Pubdate: Thu, 18 Jan 2001
Source: Amarillo Globe-News (TX)
Copyright: 2001 Amarillo Globe-News
Contact:  P.O. Box 2091, Amarillo, TX 79166
Fax: (806) 373-0810
Website: http://amarillonet.com/
Forum: http://208.138.68.214:90/eshare/server?action=4
Author: Greg Sagan, http://www.mapinc.org/authors/sagan+greg
Bookmark: Tulia, TX- http://www.mapinc.org/tulia.htm

TULIA SHOULD WORRY ABOUT JUST THE FACTS, MA'AM

Our neighbors in Tulia are taking some heat these days about
prosecuting 43 of their own on drug charges.

The heat from the media and the U.S. Department of Justice has melted
their reticence, and we have seen letters and columns in this space
penned by Tulia's residents defending the town and its people.

I plead limited knowledge of Tulia. I've been traveling through this
pretty place since the mid-1960s - on my way to high school football
games, on my way to and from the university, on my way to and from
places farther south and east where I have lived and worked.

Two things stand out about my relationship with Tulia: I never have been
wronged there, and I never have given the town any reason to take an
official interest in me. As far as I'm concerned, everyone who has declared
Tulia a nice town gets no argument from me.

But in considering the drug bust that has caused the notoriety, we
must set aside our personal prejudices about the town and consider the
facts of the case.

Were 43 people arrested on charges of holding or trafficking in
illegal drugs? Apparently so.

Were 40 of these individuals black? Apparently so.

Were these 43 people arrested, and convicted in a number of cases, on
the word of just one man? Apparently so.

Did this lone witness for the prosecution do things that should cause
his unsupported word to be questioned? Apparently so.

Were the lives of these 43 people savaged by this treatment?
Apparently so.

If these facts are true, there is a problem in Tulia. It is a problem
similar in kind to something I saw as a boy.

About the time I started school in El Paso, my mother accidentally
flushed a cloth diaper down our toilet. This diaper didn't make it to
the main sewer line - it blocked the tap line under our front yard and
caused the pipe to separate. Our front yard soon developed an unsavory
playa, and even our neighbors noticed.

Our house was always a place of pleasant scents - cooking food, clean
laundry, bathed bodies. And it would have been both true and natural
for my mother, out of embarrassment and face-saving, to walk out front
and inform our neighbors about the pleasant aromas that were the
"real" nature of our home.

But if she had done that, we inevitably would have learned two
important things. The first is that baking bread doesn't trump raw
sewage. The second is that denial doesn't fix plumbing.

The same is true for Tulia. What a wonderful place its residents
assert it to be doesn't cancel the facts if they are true. When we
arrest 43 people for drugs in a town as small as Tulia, the
preponderance of them black when the evidence shows most drug users
are white, on the strength of a single person of tarnished word, we
have an aroma that bespeaks something foul.

Assuming the facts are true, what can we conclude about
Tulia?

First, it's clear that the police there are zealously pursuing one
category of miscreant. This might not be the most dangerous element in
their society, but those arrested can't prove they are innocent and
the authorities don't have to do much to prove guilt, so the public
will give its law enforcers high marks and keep the tax dollars flowing.

Second, it's clear that Tulia has an unusual problem with addiction.
There is either a huge distortion in the demographics of drug abuse
there - 10 times more blacks than whites or Hispanics doing drugs in
Tulia - or the whites and Hispanics have somehow avoided using drugs,
being caught with drugs or being tried for drug crimes there.

Third, we can conclude that justice is weak in Tulia. It should not be
possible for anyone in this country to be successfully prosecuted for
a felony on the basis of one man's testimony, even if he carries a
badge.

I remember the 1960s and '70s, when all police were branded pigs by
many. This struck me then as an error since not all police are
disreputable. But we have swung to the other extreme when we assume
that all police are completely honest just because they carry badges,
especially when there is a clear conflict of interest present. (It's
in the best financial interests of police departments to enforce drug
laws because of the latitude they enjoy in seizing assets and
converting them to their own use.)

We have gone over the edge when we accept the word of a cop with a
history of dishonesty just because he's a cop.

The uncomfortable scrutiny of Tulia by the national media and federal
officials is not, as has been absurdly argued, a product of either
liberal do-gooders or the influence of Hollywood.

This scrutiny is the product of our collective concern that Tulia is
guilty of zealous excess in stamping out what it believes to be a great
evil.

In the process we seem to have forgotten that in this country, the
devil himself deserves justice under the law.

Greg Sagan can be contacted in care of
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