Four Hundred Georgians Protest Racially Biased Drug Arrests
Feature Story by civilrights.org staff - 4/3/2006
On March 15, nearly 400 Georgians protested the Drug Enforcement Agency's "Operation Meth Merchant," according to a Georgia racial justice group.
The event drew speakers from a wide variety of civil rights groups who criticized the DEA anti-drug program for targeting those of South Asian descent, misidentifying several arrestees and pressing charges with insufficient evidence.
"Instead of making easy arrests and tearing apart immigrant communities, police and prosecutors need to go after the people who are genuinely contributing to the methamphetamine epidemic," said Wade Henderson of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, in a statement supporting the protest.
Although three quarters of convenience store owners in the area are white, 44 of the 49 store clerks and owners arrested last June under "Operation Meth Merchant" were South Asian immigrants with limited English proficiency. Those arrested include nearly half of the South Asian population of Cartoosa County. They were charged with knowingly selling common, normally-legal items such as cold medicine, matches and antifreeze to purchasers who planned to use them to make methamphetamine.
During the sting, a dozen informants - all of whom were convicted drug offenders and had been promised reduced sentences for cooperation - purchased the items from convenience stores in Georgia. In each case, the informants reportedly used drug-related slang such as "I need to finish a cook" in front of the clerks while making the purchases, which formed the basis for the arrests.
"It makes no sense for authorities to presume that the average American, and especially a recent immigrant with limited English skills, would understand what terms like 'a cook' would mean in the context of methamphetamine," said Henderson. "Most people simply don't - and shouldn't - have any reason to know."
It was later discovered that at least four of the people arrested were out of the state at the time the informants allegedly purchased the items from them. Several were not in the country, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. Others had never even worked at the stores at which they supposedly made the sales.
A single anonymous informant, a convicted felon with a history of lying, was central to more than 20 of the arrests, according to Cox News.
As part of the protest, organized by the Racial Justice Campaign Against Operation Meth Merchant (RJCAOMM), supporters marched to U.S. Attorney David Nahmias' office to make a symbolic presentation of several hundred letters of solidarity the group had received from allied organizations and supporters. Nahmias' office refused to accept the letters, according to the RJCAOMM.
Despite these and other concerns, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales congratulated Nahmias, for "doing a great job working with local communities," in remarks delivered in Georgia on March 20.
"People in northwest Georgia need to know they aren't alone," said Priyanka Sinha of Raskha, an Atlanta South Asian community service organization. "We are mobilizing the South Asian community as well as all communities concerned with justice across Georgia. We won't take this lying down."
"Operation Meth Merchant" has already been heavily criticized by the ACLU and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
