Pubdate: Mon, 19 Mar 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 Cunningham, Globe-News Staff Writer Tulia In-Depth Look, Part 2b of 5 PROCEDURES QUESTIONED Fabricating evidence. Framing innocent suspects. Poor supervision. Faulty identification. Racism. The accusations of improprieties against the undercover operation run by Tom Coleman in Tulia in 1998 and 1999 reads like a laundry list of misconduct. Many defendants say they never met Coleman and accuse him of manufacturing evidence to frame them. Defense attorneys said Coleman should have been supervised better and surveillance should have been used to back up his word in court. At least two cases were dismissed because of questionable identification. But interviews with local officials and experienced undercover agents show the case against the operation might not be as cut and dry as the defense makes it out to be. The investigation began in 1998 with the hiring of Coleman, a 42-year-old on-again off-again lawman who was working at a welding shop in Midland when he heard about the job opening through the law enforcement grapevine. Coleman, Swisher County Sheriff Larry Stewart and members of the Panhandle Regional Narcotics Trafficking Task Force refused many interview requests, but court testimony allows the reconstruction of the events involved in the investigation. Coleman called Stewart, then traveled to the Panhandle for two interviews with Stewart and Task Force supervisors. He was hired by Stewart after a background check, but how thorough that check was is unclear because of conflicting testimony. Court records show no misconduct was found in Coleman's background at the time. Swisher County paid Coleman, but the Task Force reimbursed the county for his salary using federal funds earmarked for fighting narcotics. Stewart and Task Force officers were responsible for supervising Coleman. Coleman had little experience in narcotics work, so he underwent on-the-job-training in Amarillo with members of the Task Force and traveled to a two-week narcotics school run by the Drug Enforcement Agency. After his training, Coleman was sent to Tulia, assuming the role of deep undercover agent and the alias TJ Dawson. Coleman said in an earlier interview with the Globe-News that he was directed by Stewart to purchase narcotics from anyone who would sell them to him. Coleman took a series of jobs in Tulia, including a one-month stint at the Tulia Livestock Auction, where he met 62-year-old Eliga Kelly Sr. Coleman testified that Kelly introduced him to many of the people from whom he bought drugs. Coleman made his first purchase in March 1998 and continued to buy for almost 18 months. Coleman testified in court he asked the suspects for an "eight ball" of powder cocaine, an amount about as big as a person's thumb. Coleman said he usually made the buys, stuffed the cocaine in a pocket or his sock, then left the area, stopping to write information about the buy on his leg or chest in pen. Coleman testified he generally drove to the Task Force headquarters in Amarillo immediately, booked the cocaine as evidence and wrote his report. To identify the suspect, Coleman called Stewart or his secretary, Linda Swanson, and gave his information about the suspect, usually a street name and a physical description. Stewart or Swanson met Coleman in a secluded area with a picture matching the description, from which Coleman identified the suspect. From the first trial, defense attorneys questioned the procedures used during the investigation. They grilled Coleman on why there was no surveillance or other officers observing the buys to back up Coleman's word. Although Coleman wouldn't agree to an interview, experienced undercover agents say it is not unusual for deep undercover operations in small towns to be run without supervision. Gerald Entrop, who worked narcotics and supervised undercover operations for 15 years with the Amarillo Police Department before his retirement five years ago, said agents emphasize surveillance, for evidence and for officer safety, but couldn't always arrange it in small towns. "In these smaller communities, the people know each other," Entrop said. "You can't drive up there in a van and set up a bunch of cameras and microphones and just start recording. If they see a vehicle they don't recognize sitting there, they aren't going to make the deal." Another undercover agent, who asked not to be identified, said the picture is even more complicated. The agent spent 30 years working in undercover narcotics, including numerous stints in deep cover, before retiring as a narcotics supervisor with the Department of Public Safety several years ago. Deep undercover work requires an agent to assume the life of a drug dealer and be ready to buy at any moment, making it impractical for the agent to be supervised and under surveillance when he makes the buys. "It's nearly impossible (to have surveillance)," the former agent said. "Obviously, if you set up a huge multimillion-dollar bust and you're going to have a takedown right there, you'd have surveillance. But on a day-to-day basis with an undercover officer making street buys that won't be arrested for weeks or months, you'll very infrequently have surveillance." The retired agent said undercover operations don't happen the same way they appear on television. Agents don't use miniature tape recorders because they are unreliable, and if an agent is going to wear a wire, a receiver has to be placed in a van or building nearby, which runs into the same small-town problems of dealers identifying the police. Questions also have been raised about the process used to identify suspects, questions bolstered by the case of Yul Bryant. Bryant, 31, was arrested in the drug sting, but an incident report filed by Coleman described a tall black male with bushy hair. Bryant stands about 5 feet 7 inches tall and has been bald for five years, leading to the dismissal of the charge. Attorney Jeff Blackburn of Amarillo said Bryant's case should be all that is necessary to convince a reasonable person Coleman had a problem with identification. "If he got that one wrong, how many more are there?" Blackburn said. "When you're basing every case on the word of this one narc and he screws one up, you have to question all the others." The experts seem to disagree on the method Coleman used to identify suspects. Entrop said the agents he supervised had to pick out their suspects from a photo lineup, rather than seeing a single picture, to guarantee the agent was positive in his identification. The other former agent said he never used photo lineups. "That's not how they do it in law enforcement," the retired agent said. "You're not dealing with a store clerk who just got robbed and was scared and can't remember anything. You're dealing with a law enforcement officer who is trained in (identification)." Lt. Joe Bill Dempsey, Tulia Police Department public information officer, was one of only two people in the department who knew Coleman was operating in town. He said the identification process was actually quite rigorous. - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- - ---- Charles Kiker, foreground, and Gary Gardner watch the proceedings at a Friends of Justice meeting. Annette Drowlette/Globe-News - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- - ---- Coleman called the Swisher County Sheriff's Department with an extremely detailed description, which was passed on to the police department. Several of the police officers, including Police Chief Jim McCaslin, have lived in Tulia all their lives and easily identified the suspects because they knew them personally or had dealt with them during previous arrests, Dempsey said. As further proof of the care used in identification, Dempsey pointed to one case where the wrong name was put down through a clerical error. Dempsey said the mistake was easily fixed, but Stewart refused to take the case to the district attorney because he didn't want any question about the identification. Perhaps the biggest concern about the investigation ' the question of race - - has not been raised in a courtroom, but became the focus of the court of public opinion. Supporters of the defendants claim that 39 of the 46 defendants were black proves there was a racial bias in the investigation. "How can you rip such a large percentage of the black population out of this town and not say it was racially motivated?" said Charles Kiker, who helped organize the Friends of Justice to support the defendants. But the experts say nothing could be further from the truth, as undercover agents frequently net large numbers of a particular race. District Attorney Terry McEachern said the reason so many defendants are black can be narrowed to one person - Kelly. McEachern said Kelly, who is black and refused a request for an interview, was Coleman's entree into Tulia and introduced him to the people he knew, who naturally were black or - - in the case of the other seven defendants - had dealings with the black community. Both of the former agents said they have seen the same phenomenon in their careers, not just with blacks, but with other groups involved in selling drugs. But with a charge to purchase drugs from anyone who would sell, many question why Coleman did not try to expand his investigation to other racial groups selling drugs. Dempsey said it was simply impossible for Coleman to make that move. "The reason he caught so many blacks is because that's the group he was introduced to," Dempsey said. "And as he goes on, he meets more and more people, but they're all connected. They're all friends or family of the people he started with. How does he change that group? How does he say, 'I don't want to buy your drugs anymore. I'm going to go buy these people's drugs?' They would have known he was a cop instantly, and it all would have been over." Many defenders of those arrested also question why Coleman purchased powder cocaine almost exclusively, which is generally considered a white, upper-class drug, rather than the much cheaper and more readily available crack cocaine. McEachern said Coleman was told to go after powder cocaine because a small amount of powder can make a much larger amount of crack. By asking for powder cocaine, Coleman was getting more drugs off the streets, which was the objective of the operation, McEachern said. Perhaps the most troubling accusations about the investigation - the allegations of the framing of suspects and fabrication of evidence - will be the most difficult to prove true or false. At least a dozen defendants contacted for this series accused Coleman of framing them, and a civil lawsuit accuses Coleman of fabricating evidence to make arrests. Because the defendants and Coleman were by and large the only witnesses to the drug deals, the answers to those questions lie exclusively with them. The only thing the retired agents can offer to help resolve the question is that they both had similar accusations - and sometimes worse - made against them in their careers. "They (accused drug dealers) are going to try to ruin your reputation where you won't be credible in court," Entrop said. "They're going to make every accusation they can think of because that's the only way they can get off." - --- MAP posted-by: Jo-D