Texas. In November 2000 these individuals were arrested on charges of possession or distribution of crack cocaine, and they subsequently filed a case against the county government. On May 11, 2005, a magistrate judge found sufficient evidence that a Byrne-funded anti-drug task force had routinely targeted African Americans to hold the county liable for the harm suffered by the plaintiffs. Plaintiffs in that lawsuit alleged that for the past 15 years, based on the uncorroborated tales of informants, task force members annually raided the African American community in eastern Hearne to arrest the residents identified by the confidential informants, resulting in the arrest and prosecution of innocent citizens without cause. On the eve of trial the counties involved in the Hearne task force scandal settled the case, agreeing to pay financial damages to the plaintiffs. (6) Scandals related to the Byrne grants program have grown so prolific that the Texas legislature has passed several reforms in response to them, including outlawing racial profiling and changing Texas law to prohibit drug offense convictions based solely on the word of an undercover informant. The Criminal Jurisprudence Committee of the Texas House of Representatives issued a report in 2004 recommending that all of the State’s federally funded antidrug task forces be abolished because they are inherently prone to corruption. The Committee reported, Continuing to sanction task force operations as stand-alone law enforcement entities—with widespread authority to operate at will across multiple jurisdictional lines—should not continue. The current approach violates practically every sound principle of police oversight and accountability applicable to narcotics interdiction. The Texas legislature passed a law that ends the ability of a narcotics task force to operate as an entity with no clear accountability. The legislation transfers authority for multicounty drug task forces to the Department of Public Safety and channels one-quarter of asset