No Evidence of Police Racism in Tulia (TX) Drug Sting

An FBI investigation of the controversial 1999 Tulia Texas drug sting found no evidence to support allegations that Panhandle police were racist or that they violated anyone's civil rights, according to long withheld investigative materials obtained exclusively by CBS-11 News. CBS-11 has learned that civil rights investigations by the FBI and one by the Texas Attorney General's office were closed after nearly a third of the 40 defendants interviewed by federal agents implicated themselves and others of actually dealing drugs in Tulia. Gov. Rick Perry last summer pardoned all of those the FBI independently implicated for drug dealing, despite the availability of the reports. They also shared in a $6 million civil rights lawsuit settlement this year, mostly from the city of Amarillo. The civil rights investigations centered on a 1999 sting conducted by an Amarillo-based regional drug task force and Tom Coleman, its white undercover officer. Coleman's uncorroborated solo work resulted in the arrests of dozens of mostly black Tulia residents and provoked national condemnation as a blatantly racist effort to cleanse Tulia of innocent black people. [more ]