The Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into whether civil rights were violated in a drug bust that rounded up 40 black people in a small, predominantly white Texas Panhandle farming town last year. Justice Department spokeswoman Kara Peterman said Thursday that the department's civil rights division has opened a criminal investigation into the case.
Federal law prohibits police officers from depriving citizens of their constitutional rights.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the American Civil Liberties Union filed a complaint earlier this month with the Justice Department charging racial bias was behind the arrests. Two whites and one Hispanic were also arrested. Nearly 250 of the town's 5,000 residents are black. All rights reserved.