The ACLU just filed sworn informant testimony in the Georgia meth merchant case showing law enforcement targeted Gujarati shopkeepers because they spoke poor English, entrapped them, then selectively prosecuted based on race (thanks, technophobicgeek):

Documents filed by the A.C.L.U. yesterday include a sworn statement from an informant in the sting, saying that federal investigators sent informants only to Indian-owned stores, “because the Indians’ English wasn’t good.” The informant said investigators ignored the informant’s questions about why so many South-Asian-owned stores were visited in the sting.

Other filings said prosecutors had several tips that more than a dozen white-owned stores were selling the same ingredients, but failed to follow up on them. According to a sworn statement from a witness, law enforcement officials tipped off a white store owner about the investigation and recommended ways to avoid scrutiny…

Of 629 convenience stores in the six-county area in the sting, 80 percent are owned or operated by whites, according to the A.C.L.U.’s court filing, but fewer than 1 percent of the stores in the sting are white-owned or operated. The filing said the clerk at the only white-operated store was known widely as a methamphetamine addict whose husband was in prison for making the drug. [Link]

I think we have a new rallying cry:

“Selling Sudafed while South Asian is not a crime,” said Christina Alvarez, an attorney with the ACLU Drug Law Reform Project. “The U.S. Constitution requires police to investigate people based on evidence, not ethnicity…”

By the time Operation Meth Merchant was completed, almost 20 percent of the South-Asian-owned stores in the area were indicted, while only 0.2 percent of stores owned by whites or other ethnic groups were similarly accused. All in all, South-Asian-owned stores were nearly 100 times more likely to be targeted…

“They only sent me to Indian storesÂ…they wanted me to say things like ‘I need it to go cookÂ’ or ‘Hurry up, IÂ’ve got to get home and finish a cookÂ’,” said an undercover informant in a sworn statement attached to the ACLUÂ’s legal papers. “The officers told me that the IndiansÂ’ English wasnÂ’t good, and they wouldnÂ’t say a lot so it was important for me to make these kinds of statements…”

“Northwest Georgia is made no safer by police targeting a particular racial group while giving a free pass to those they have good reason to believe are actually making and selling meth,” said Deepali Gokhale, organizer of the Racial Justice Campaign Against Operation Meth Merchant… [Link]

The facts aren’t all on the table yet, but from a distance it smells like Tulia all over again, and both times in the South. I can’t muster much sympathy for people who knowingly supplied tweak traffickers, selective prosecution or no. But if it turns out the cops entrapped shop clerks with poor English proficiency by using inscrutable drug jargon, it would be ethically disgusting.

What also bothers me is that all the first-gen Gujarati shopkeepers I’ve met seem socially conservative and anti-drugs at a visceral level. If I were to play ‘Name the Criminal Mastermind,’ anything drug-related would be pretty far down the list.Here’s the full text (PDF) of the filing, excerpted below. They’re making a 14th Amendment Equal Protection Clause argument:

… Defendants have presented evidence that investigators specifically targeted South Asians in an effort to exploit their lack of proficiency in English…

Defendants have provided clear evidence that (1) hundreds of other non-South Asian retailers in the same area committed identical acts but were not investigated, and (2) Defendants were selected for investigation based on their South Asian ethnicity…

Rather than either pursuing specific investigative leads regarding the merchants who were selling these ingredients to known meth manufacturers or choosing a random sample of retailers stocking such products, OMM agents specifically targeted a small number of stores operated by South Asians… It appears that law enforcement completely ignored the vast majority of the tips they received regarding non-South Asian retailers…

John Doe 2, who was used by the government to make targeted buys, has sworn under penalty of perjury that he/she routinely purchased products from “all over,” but law enforcement “only sent me to Indian stores” to perform controlled buys…

While the government has discretion to decide against whom it will focus its resources, government agents may not exercise this discretion on the constitutionally impermissible basis of ethnicity…

… the very same investigators who directed OMM knew first-hand of reports that these non-South Asian merchants had been selling the same products that Defendants are accused of selling, under materially identical circumstances, and to individuals who actually used those products to manufacture meth. [emphasis in original] Instead of relying to this information, investigators violated DefendantsÂ’ constitutional rights by targeting them because of their South Asian ethnicity…

John Doe 2Â’s declaration explains that GBI Special Agent Thomasson (a) only directed him/her to perform targeted buys at South Asian stores, (b) ordered John Doe 2 to make unsolicited and incriminating colloquial statements about “finish[ing] a cook” after paying for the products “because the IndiansÂ’ English wasnÂ’t good,” and (c) offered no response to John Doe 2Â’s direct questioning regarding why South Asians were being targeted by the stings. As such, Agent Thomasson admitted that South Asian merchants were intentionally and invidiously targeted because they had poor proficiency in English and were thus, unlikely to understand colloquial expressions that may be used in the drug trade (e.g., using the word “cook” to mean manufacture meth in a drug lab). Consequently, investigators apparently believed that South Asians would be less likely to orally object when CIs made similar incriminating statements to support an arrest…

A comparison to Yick Wo v. Hopkins, the seminal case in equal protection jurisprudence, is instructive in understanding the gravity of the statistical disparity at issue in this case. Like DefendantsÂ’ cases, Yick Wo involved a group of immigrant (i.e., Chinese) small businesspersons who were subject to a grossly discriminatory application of a facially neutral law. In Yick Wo, the petitioners were denied permits to operate laundries in wooden buildings and produced evidence that Chinese-owned laundries were 66 times more likely to be shut down under the ordinance than non-Chinese laundries… Remarkably, Defendants statistical evidence in this case is even more compelling than the evidence in Yick Wo…

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Related posts: The prosecution’s case falls apart, Operation Meth Merchant, Meet Vanita Gupta in D.C.