Texas drug task forces counting on renewed funding next March might find themselves hanging out to dry thanks to a bevy of scandals and an especially wet hurricane season on the Gulf Coast, Tim Eaton reported in the Wichita Falls Times Record News today ("N. Texas Drug Task Force Could End in March 2006", Oct. 22).
Eaton describes the many interests angling to reduce task force funding -- President Bush who wants to zero out their budget, the US House of Representatives which want to cut it in half, conservative activists who dislike task forces' lack of accountability, and civil rights activists unhappy about Tulia and many other scandals. Here are some of the main reasons presented for why task forces could end:
Pressure to use federal dollars for hurricane relief combined with problems with some task forces - particularly one in Tulia - have led to an unusual coalition of conservatives and liberals determined to take apart task forces.
Will Harrell, executive director of the ACLU of Texas, said he looks forward to saying "good riddance" to the task forces, which he said are often abusive and unchecked organizations.
"It's just a matter of time before these things go out of existence," Harrell said. "They're inherently flawed, and the evidence is clear. There is no genuine accountably for their actions."
The ACLU has documented 18 cases of civil rights abuse and corruption since 2001 when the organization started focusing on task forces following the events in Tulia, Harrell said. In July 1999, 46 Tulia residents, most of them black, were arrested and accused of possessing cocaine after an 18-month investigation by an undercover agent, who was later convicted on one of two perjury charges. Later, in August 2003, 38 of the Tulia defendants were pardoned by Gov. Rick Perry.
On the fiscally conservative side of the task force debate, leaders of groups such as the American Conservative Union and the National Taxpayers' Union have said they do not want to see grant programs that are "fatally flawed due to their lack of adequate measures of performance." ...
Nationally, many lawmakers want to cut Byrne grant funding, said Bill Piper, director of national affairs for the Washington, D.C.-based Drug Policy Alliance.
While leaders in the U.S. Senate are pushing for the status quo of $625 million a year, U.S. House leaders have said $350 million would be enough. And President Bush has advocated eliminating the funding in a year when tens of billion of dollars will be needed to pay for hurricane relief.
The federal government has many big-ticket items for which it desperately needs fast cash, and increasingly Washington sees the Byrne grant fund as one more pot of pork barrel money to raid for its priority du jour. Our military is occupying a foreign land. The Gulf Coast is in shambles. Now just isn't the time to throw good money after bad on failed strategies. If federal Byrne grant funding can't be diverted to programs with better outcomes and greater accountability, then it should certainly be eliminated.
