I was watching TV last night when I chanced upon BBC's Correspondent (yes, oddly enough it bears the same title as a late night investigative journalism show on ABS-CBN). Don't know if you'll be able to watch it. So I spent the afternoon looking for the page so I could show it to you. The episode only proves racial prejudice still exists in places like Texas.

The story focused on how one undercover cop managed to put 46 people in jail. He went undercover for a few months and without any evidence, save for plastic bags laced with cocaine and his word, he managed to put all those people to jail. Most of them were impoverished black folk. Points of contention? The detective, "worked without a partner, without a tape recorder, without video back-up, without using finger print evidence and without a notebook."

The evidence he turned in was questionable. He turned in plastic bags lined with cocaine, with a purity of 1-3%. In most cases in other US states, confiscated cocaine doesn't go lower than 80%. Apparently in Texas that doesn't matter. As long as there is a trace of cocaine it's admissible. He had no notes, recorded conversations or any corroborating evidence. In the trials that followed, all there was was his word against the defendants'. The jurors were predominantly white in all the trials. In the end, 40 people were sentenced to long prison terms, all for selling cocaine.

His possible motivation? He was a wandering cop, working as a cop all over the Texas for short contracts in impoverished towns. When he landed a job in Tulia as a deputy, he was assigned to a county anti-drug task force. That task force receives funding from the Federal government. One of the criteria by which the Feds decide how much this task force gets in funding is their arrests. In one year, this lone detective put away 40 people. He was cited as the law enforcement officer of that same year. The task force got an increase the next year for being "effective" in their job. It's also worthy to note that the task force isn't liable to anyone in the State of Texas. They operate autonomously and they answer only to the Federal government. Local sheriff's departments only contribute manpower, nothing more.

Its such a pity that the world's strongest democracy is still rife with prejudice; where the people in the establishment care more about numbers, deadlines and budgets than they do about people. Pity indeed.