By Howard Witt / Chicago Tribune
Driving through Tenaha, Texas, doesn’t pay for some Texas, black motorists
A lawsuit alleges that the town’s police pull over motorists — especially African Americans — and extort money and valuables by threatening criminal charges or worse.
Reporting from Tenaha, Texas — You can drive into this dusty fleck of a town near the Texas-Louisiana state line if you’re African American, but you might not be able to drive out of it — at least not with your car, your cash, your jewelry or other valuables.
That’s because the police here allegedly have found a way to strip motorists, many of them black, of their property without ever charging them with a crime. Instead they offer out-of-towners a grim choice: Sign over your belongings to the town, or face felony charges of money laundering or other serious crimes.
More than 140 people reluctantly accepted that deal from June 2006 to June 2008, according to court records. Among them were a black grandmother from Akron, Ohio, who surrendered $4,000 in cash after Tenaha police pulled her over, and an interracial couple from Houston, who gave up more than $6,000 after police threatened to seize their children and put them into foster care, the court documents show. Neither the grandmother nor the couple were charged with or convicted of any crime.