In Congress, No Support for No More Tulias
A scandal has recently hit the New York Police Department, members of which have been convicted of planting drugs on innocent people and then arresting them for possession. This practice, called “flaking,” leads to impressive arrest statistics for a police department. The side effect: massive miscarriages of justice.
The practice of false accusation is not limited to the state of New York. The state of Texas is home to a small town named Tulia, where the police arrested 10% of the town’s black population on one morning. Innocent people were pilloried as “scumbags” in the local press and were convicted of selling drugs solely on the false testimony of the police, who were heralded in the press as heroes until the lies came to light.
To make sure this problem doesn’t hit one more American community, Representative Sheila Jackson Lee has introduced H.R. 231, the No More Tulias Act. The No More Tulias Act promotes criminal justice reforms to require some kind of evidence to send a person to jail on drug charges beyond the say-so of a police officer.
Not one person in the House of Representatives has signed on in support of the No More Tulias Act. Sheila Jackson Lee stands alone.
