Tulia (1 of 5 free samples)

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COPYRIGHT
Tulia by Nate Blakeslee. Copyright 2005 by Nate Blakeslee.
All Rights Reserved. Sharing not permitted.

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TULIA
Race, Cocaine, and Corruption in a Small Texas Town

Nate Blakeslee

For Karen


PROLOGUE: MARCH 20, 2003

TOM COLEMAN entered the courtroom of the Swisher County courthouse on Thursday afternoon, March 20, 2003, wearing an Italian-style black leather jacket over a blue shirt and black tie. A sea of black faces in the packed gallery craned their necks to get a glimpse of him, but he did not return their gaze. Coleman kept his eyes fixed straight ahead, his head tilted slightly downward, as he marched up the aisle toward the front of the small courtroom. It had become a familiar posture for the former narcotics officer over the preceding week. Each morning, he had been forced to run a gauntlet of photographers and reporters waiting outside the courthouse for him. They had snapped countless photos of him scurrying up the steps of the courthouse's side entrance in his black cowboy hat and dark sunglasses, but he had spoken not a word. Today was the day they were all waiting for, the day he would have no choice but to take the stand and break his silence.
Four satellite trucks were in the parking lot, waiting to beam news of his testimony from this tiny west Texas town to the world.

The courtroom on the second floor of the Swisher County courthouse was not designed with great deeds in mind. It is a utilitarian facility of fluorescent lights and cheap linoleum and hard-backed church pews for the gallery, a courtroom where trials are run as efficiently and economically as the farms and ranches of the plainsmen whose hard-earned tax money built it. Yet it had been the scene of Coleman's greatest triumphs as a police officer, the place that had made him, however briefly, a hero. Posing as a down-and-out construction worker, Coleman had worked undercover for eighteen months in Tulia, during which time he reported making over 100 purchases of illegal drugs, mostly powdered cocaine. The suspects were arrested in a massive raid in July 1999. When the smoke had cleared, Coleman's one-man operation had netted no fewer than forty-seven cocaine dealers, most of them black. It was a stunning success.
For his accomplishment, Coleman was named an Officer of the Year, the most coveted award among Texas narcs. He went to Austin to have his picture taken with John Cornyn, the state attorney general (later elected U.S. Senator). The papers called him a one-man wrecking crew, a lone ranger. In fact, he was the son of a Texas Ranger, the mythical corps of elite lawmen celebrated the world over for their prowess and bravery. Coleman had finally filled his father's giant boots.

The last time Coleman had appeared in this courtroom was in September 2000, when he testified against Kareem Abdul Jabbar White, the last person to stand trial in the bust. White had been sentenced to sixty years in prison in that trial, another in a long list of impressive convictions for Coleman, who by that time was already at work on a new undercover operation in another corner of Texas. Things weren't like that anymore. Coleman was no longer a cop, for one thing. He had been fired from two narcotics assignments since leaving Tulia, and was now driving a truck for a gas company, checking lines in the desolate ranching country south of Dallas. But that was just the beginning of Coleman's troubles.
In the intervening two and a half years, the following facts about Coleman's past had become public knowledge: that he had no experience whatsoever in undercover narcotics work prior to coming to Tulia; that he had walked off the job as a deputy sheriff in two small west Texas towns, in each case abruptly leaving town with thousands of dollars in unpaid debts; that one of the sheriffs he'd worked for in the past had filed criminal charges on Coleman, resulting in his indictment while working undercover in Tulia; that he was widely reputed to be both a racist and a pathological liar; and that he was obsessed with guns and paranoid fantasies.

The story of the Tulia sting became a national scandal. Troublesome facts about Coleman's methods were the subject of investigative reports in dozens of media outlets, from the New York Times, to Court TV, to the Independent of London: how Coleman never wore a wire, videotaped his buys, or had a second officer observe him; how the vast majority of his alleged buys had no corroboration whatsoever; how most of the evidence was powdered cocaine, despite the fact that Coleman had infiltrated a community of low-income blacks where marijuana and crack were the most commonly used drugs; how Coleman's reports typically consisted of a few paragraphs with virtually no description of the defendants; and how Coleman grossly misidentified suspects in a handful of cases that were quietly disposed of by the district attorney after the indictments were issued.

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