The Usual Suspects

• A drug task force in a rural Texas town targeted a Black population and charged 72 apparent crack addicts as dealers. It all sounds painfully familiar.

It began, as many drug stings do, with a lucky break. In November 2002, a traffic cop pulled over a driver ferrying crack cocaine on U.S. Highway 79 into the small east Texas town of Palestine. Police believed they had caught a glimpse into a drug ring that was smuggling crack from Houston and Dallas into rural Anderson County, 40 miles southwest of Tyler. The Dogwood Trails Narcotics Task Force, a regional alliance of local, state and federal law enforcement, promptly launched an investigation. When the arrests came two years later, residents of Palestine must have been surprised to learn that their small town apparently had more crack dealers than restaurants. On Oct. 13, teams from the Anderson County sheriff's office, Texas Department of Public Safety, U.S. Marshall's Service, and the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) started at 7 a.m. and swept through tiny Palestine (population 17,000) to round up an astonishing 40 indicted drug dealers. More arrests followed in the coming days. In all, a total of 72 Anderson County residents were detained on various state and federal drug dealing charges. After the arrests, the U.S. Department of Justice put out a celebratory press release that boasted of cracking a large Anderson County drug distribution ring. [more]

• Officer charged with evidence tampering in fake-drug case [more]
• Failed prosecutions drain public coffers