Evidently were targeted by the guy that was in charge of the operation.
He lied about buying drugs from the couple. Story says he'll likely face charges...
"Likely face charges"? BS He needs to be charged with
Capital Murder.
Also, they need to hand this investigation over to Texas Rangers. A department "internal investigation" just doesn't cut it.
They also need to do something with that azzwhole that went on TV calling the couple that were killed "Scumbags".
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HPD Chief Acevedo says narcotics cop committed likely crime by lying in affidavit for deadly raidAn internal Houston police investigation has uncovered alarming deficiencies in the department's narcotics division that led to an allegedly
falsified search warrant used to justify a southeast Houston drug raid last month that killed two Pecan Park residents and injured five officers, according to documents obtained Friday by the Houston Chronicle.
In a hastily called press conference, Police Chief Art Acevedo said Gerald Goines, the veteran narcotics case agent at the center of the controversy, will likely face criminal charges.
The internal investigation revealed he allegedly lied about using a confidential informant to conduct an undercover buy at the residence on Harding Street. The buy led to a raid and a fatal gunfight at the house the next day, killing Dennis Tuttle, 59, and Rhogena Nicholas, 58, and injuring five Houston Police Department officers.The debacle, which has infuriated officers across the department and which critics say has damaged public trust in HPD, and infuriated members of the department's rank-and-file, also prompted Acevedo to order an "extensive audit" of the 175-member narcotics division and an examination of Goines' recent cases.
"We know that there's already a crime that's been committed," Acevedo said. "It's a serious crime when we prepare a document to go into somebody's home, into the sanctity that is somebody's home. It has to be truthful, it has to be honest, it has to be factual. We know already there's a crime that's been committed. There's high probability there will be a criminal charge."
Houston Police Officers' Union President Joe Gamaldi said that while he was "extremely concerned and disturbed" by the allegations that came to light Friday, they were "not indicative" of the performance of the rest of the department's 5,200 officers. He pledged to back any reforms needed to avoid similar misconduct in the future.
"We certainly feel this is an isolated incident," he said. "However, we will certainly support any review or changes to policy that need to be made in order to ensure that something like this never happens again."
The critical allegations were outlined in a sworn affidavit written by HPD Officer R. Bass, with the department's Special Investigations Unit, who asked a judge for a search warrant to examine the cell phone of officer Steven Bryant, an undercover narcotics officer relieved of duty after the shooting.
The Chronicle normally does not publish the names of undercover officers, but Goines and Bryant were identified in an affidavit related to a search warrant and both have been relieved of duty by Acevedo.
In the initial HPD warrant, Goines wrote that he monitored a buy at the home by a confidential informant, who identified the substance that was purchased as heroin and said there was a 9mm handgun in the house. Police obtained a no-knock warrant —allowing them to enter unannounced — and burst into the small southeast home the next day to a hail of gunfire.
At the end of the shootout, both Tuttle and Nicholas had been shot to death, and five officers were injured — four by gunfire. Police found 18 grams of marijuana — about half an ounce — and a little more than a gram of white powder, but no heroin or trafficking paraphernalia. After the fatal operation, neighbors pushed back on assertions by police the residence was a drug house.
HPD investigators have not been unable to locate the confidential informants who Goines claimed — in two separate interviews — made the undercover purchases at the Pecan Park home, according to Bass' affidavit.
When detectives talked to the informants, both said they'd worked for Goines but never purchased drugs at the 7815 Harding home where Tuttle and Nicholas were killed. Investigators then got a full list of Goines' confidential informants, and they all denied making a buy at the Tuttle house or ever purchasing narcotics from Nicholas or Tuttle.
Bryant told investigators he had retrieved two bags of heroin from the center console of Goines' police car at the instruction of another officer. That was not consistent with the affidavit used to obtain the warrant for the Jan. 28 raid, which said Bryant identified heroin brought out of the house. Though he took the two bags of drugs for testing to determine that they were heroin, Bryant eventually said he had never seen the narcotics in question before retrieving them from the car.
Investigators are reviewing Goines' past cases, Acevedo said, adding that he's assigned Assistant Chief Pedro Lopez to take a broader look "to make sure that we're not being myopic, that we look at our entire narcotics operation out there, in terms of the street level units, and they'll be conducting a very extensive audit."
The allegations of false information used to conduct a raid that led to the death of two residents and left five officers injured further stunned and angered residents. It marked one of most significant cases of police misconduct within the narcotics division in decades.https://www.chron.com/news/houston-...ting-affidavit-confidential-13620120.php
