Meth sting targeted South Asians, filing says

Published 9:50 am Tuesday, April 4, 2006

ATLANTA — Prosecutors and police zeroed in on stores owned by South Asians while ignoring white-owned stores in a sweeping drug sting, the American Civil Liberties Union contends in a motion to be filed this week.

The motion, which will be filed Wednesday, says authorities selectively targeted South Asians during an 18-month investigation that aimed to curb the sale of household products used to manufacture methamphetamines.

“They’re targeting people who don’t make meth, they don’t use meth and they don’t sell meth,” said Christina Alvarez, an ACLU attorney handling the case. “People should be concerned that the government is continuing to blatantly scapegoat certain segments of society.”

The group hopes the filing will prompt a judge to toss out the case against dozens of South Asian merchants indicted last year in Operation Meth Merchant, a sting designed to send a message to retailers knowingly selling meth-related products to drug makers.

Beginning in early 2004, 15 undercover agents were sent to small grocery stores, tobacco shops and delis in six remote northwest Georgia counties.

Once there, prosecutors said the informants were sold products ranging from antifreeze to pseudoephedrine even after the informants told the clerks — sometimes using slang terms — that they planned to make meth.

The investigation raised eyebrows, though, when 44 of the 49 retail clerks and convenience store owners indicted were South Asian, including several who shared the last name Patel. All but one of the 24 implicated stores were owned by South Asians.

In an area where roughly 20 percent of the 600 retailers are owned by South Asians, critics said authorities were “scapegoating” minorities.

“When we first started organizing, the people targeted were terrified,” said Deepali Gokhale, an Atlanta activist who mobilized the area’s South Asians and led protests in downtown Atlanta against the investigation. “They came out of their shock, and as they did, they realized the U.S. government had betrayed them.”

Prosecutors said the federal law makes clear that it is illegal for merchants to sell products knowing — or with reason to believe — that they could be used to produce drugs.

Although a few of the cases have been tossed out, several have yielded guilty pleas and others are headed to trial, said David Nahmias, the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia. His office would not disclose an exact number, however, because cases are still ongoing.

In a statement, Nahmias denied claims that prosecutors intentionally targeted South Asian merchants and said attorneys were assessing each case on its own merits.

Lawyers for several of the suspects have claimed a cultural and language barrier contributed to their arrests. In the audiotape in Malvika Patel’s case, for instance, the informant used the slang term “cook” for meth — a term her attorney McCracken Poston argued wasn’t mainstream.

Patel’s case was later dropped after she proved she was in Cleveland, Tenn., when the alleged sale occurred. The cases against six other suspects have also been dropped, Alvarez said.

The ACLU filing asks the court to dismiss the rest of the cases or call for a full hearing into allegations of selective investigation. It will be filed Wednesday, said Anjuli Verma, advocacy director of the group’s drug law reform project.

Through police records and court filings, the ACLU said its team of five lawyers and three investigators documented dozens of white-owned stores that were cited by meth manufacturers but weren’t probed.

The group will also provide testimony from two anonymous meth manufacturers, one who claims to have been an informant during the police sting. That informant contends in an affidavit he told police he purchased his supplies from white-owned stores but was ordered to make undercover purchases at South Asian stores.

“There’s not only something fishy. There’s downright evidence of discrimination,” Alvarez said. “It’s time to take a deeper look.”

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On the Net:

ACLU: http://www.aclu.org

Department of Justice: http://www.usdoj.gov