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1999 sex and race, with names on the back. Markham says she typically tried to do photo IDs for her own cases within a few days or \(under extenuating circumsuspect’s face began to fade. Beals had waited months. “Guess what? I’m sorry, but there’s no way you can remember a guy you bought from five months and fifty cases ago,” Markham said. In fact, there does seem to be some confusion about just who the suspects were in these cases. According to arrest warrants obtained by the Observer, a Polk County bust-out in late November of 1997 resulted in 10 arrests in cases made by Beals in the summer and fall of 1996. Six of the warrants contained names that differed from those Beals had written in the case logs. The case numbers, dates, and charges matched, but the names did not. Some were close: A case logged as “Derrick Johnson” resulted in the arrest of one Derrick Ramon Petty. A “Kenneth Harrell” became Darrell Wayne Harrell. But others were not at all similar: A warrant for Terry Lynn Jackson bore the case number for the suspect Beals had logged as “Tommy Phillips.” Jimmy Dewayne Davis was arrested for a case logged as Charles Knight. Michael Deon Burch’s case was logged as Eric Davis. Could they all have been honest mistakes, or aliases? Asked about the discrepancies, Markham was skeptical. More likely, she said, is that the names Beals provided could not be locat Black cases White cases ed in the stacks of photos maintained by Polk County authorities, and Beals either guessed or was coached into making the IDs for the warrants. “They’ll say, ‘We don’t have a Kenneth Harrell… are you sure it wasn’t Darrell Wayne Harrell?'” she said. Six months after the fact, who’s to say if it was or wasn’t? There are a lot of Harrells in the area, Markham said. “Once you get your name on the list, you’re screwed.” The last straw came shortly thereafter for Markham. Beals swore by his snitch, James McCloud. “He called him his super snitch, because he brought the dopers right to you,” Markham recalls. As she returned to duty, Beals suggested she make some cases in Liberty County using McCloud. Agents often share snitches among one another and with other agencies.The best snitches are paid informants; they make a living of sorts doing nothing but helping narcs set up deals. The standard fee paid by the CCNTF was $50 per case, according to Markham.The task force set up an apartment for McCloud in a public housing complex in Dayton, just outside of Liberty, and he and Markham went into business. Right from the start, Markham had misgivings about McCloud. In no time, McCloud had arranged for a dealer to come to the apartment with some marijuana. But when the dealer arrived, McCloud took him into the kitchen, out of Markham’s sight. The dealer soon left, without Markham having observed any deal taking place. McCloud returned from the kitchen with a baggie of pot. He immediately set about writing up a CI witness statement, in which he claimed to have witnessed Markham receiving the pot directly from the dealer. “I told him that just wouldn’t work,” Markham said. His witness statement was false, and the case was only marginally prosecutable, because she had not witnessed the actual transfer of pot and cash. Then McCloud said something very disturbing. “He said, ‘That’s how we did all of our cases up in Polk County,'” she said. \(McCloud could not be In a second incident, McCloud brought Jackie Semien, a young woman from the complex, to the apartment. After Markham briefly left the apartment and returned, she noticed coffee table. She tried to offer Semien five dollars, but she wouldn’t take it. Instead McCloud took the bill. Shortly thereafter, Semien left, and once again, McCloud offered to write up a witness statement alleging a direct transfer from the suspect to Markham. Markham is now convinced that Semien was brought to the apartment under false pretenses by McCloud and set up, and that the dope was McCloud’s all along. \(Semien declined to be interviewed for this story. However, when Markham first brought this story to KHOU television in Houston, Semien confirmed Markham’s version After one more questionable deal, Markham complained to her superiors, assistant commander Dearl Hardy and commander Don Palmer. “They told me, ‘That’s the nature of the beast,'” Markham said. \(Citing the settlement agreement, 1995 1996 1997 1998 Race of suspects in CCNTF Cases 1995 to 1999 8/17/01 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 11