houston pd – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Houston, Texas Poised To Become The Next Major City To Drop ShotSpotter

from the public-safety-ROI-just-not-where-it-needs-to-be dept

ShotSpotter hasn’t been doing all that well lately. While it’s the market leader in acoustic detection tech for law enforcement, it has seen several large contracts slip through its re-branded fingers in recent months.

While ShotSpotter executives and press releases tout the accuracy of its sensors, real-life experience hasn’t been quite as stellar. Even if you ignore the fact that most sensors in most cities are placed in low-income neighborhoods populated by minorities, you still have to deal with the uncomfortable reality that spotting shots doesn’t do all that much to deter gun crime. It rarely leads to closed cases and successful prosecutions. And it tends to exacerbate existing staffing problems by scrambling cops to reported gun shots where they’re expected to do a lot with little more than the knowledge an electronic device heard something in the vicinity.

Chicago is letting its contract with ShotSpotter expire in September after an Inspector General’s report found the tech wasn’t millions of dollars better than doing nothing at all. That termination is now up for debate, thanks to ShotSpotter (now known as SoundThinking) managing to talk a few city officials into advocating on its behalf.

But other cities have dropped the tech for the same reason. Houston is the latest to declare it’s going to stop spending millions of dollars a year on a product that has demonstrated extremely limited value when it comes to preventing or investigating gun-related crime.

Mayor John Whitmire said Tuesday he wants to cancel Houston’s $3.5 million ShotSpotter contract, calling the gunshot detection technology a “gimmick.”

“I’ll continue to call it a gimmick,” he said. “I think it was one of those programs that was implemented to make people think we’re really fighting crime, but it doesn’t affect the crime rate.”

That’s the mayor’s opinion. ShotSpotter has one of its own, of course. The statement given to Houston’s KHOU says the company believes the mayor’s comments are “misinformed and inaccurate.” It provided no supporting data for its counterclaim, but suggested the tech had been instrumental in helping EMTs find 35 gunshot victims since its arrival in Houston in 2020.

Even if true, that’s not really doing much for Houston’s desires or even the company’s stated aims. Finding shot people may occasionally lead to the arrest of a perpetrator, but finding shot people doesn’t actually contribute to public safety. Nor does it suggest hearing gunshots has any sort of deterrent effect on people prone to shooting guns at others.

While the mayor may want to terminate the contract, it’s not entirely clear that he can. It’s a five-year contract that runs through 2027. While he’s free to let it expire, pulling the plug early may lead to additional financial charges or, in the worst case scenario, legal difficulties for the city.

The bigger problem with ShotSpotter’s defensive statements on behalf of its bottom line is that it’s not just the mayor saying the tech is unhelpful. During a city council “workshop” dealing with the Houston PD budget, interim police chief Larry Satterville had this to say about the tech:

While he explained that ShotSpotter technology had benefitted some gunshot victims, he revealed there were downsides. Satterwhite also acknowledged that ShotSpotter alerts which are coded as high priority sometimes diverted officers from other crimes, including burglaries in-process.

Much like the people ShotSpotter is supposed to help catch, the Houston PD is far better at shooting guns than helping people who have been shot, especially when they’ve been shot by Houston police officers. The Houston PD, on the other hand, has previously touted the tech as a success, claiming the more than 5,000 alerts delivered between 2020 and 2023 led to [squints at PD brag sheet] 99 arrests.

If a <2% return on gunshot alert investment is worth spending $3.5 million a year on, you’d think there would be more full-blown support for the tech by the city and its PD. Instead, the top officials for both have called it a “gimmick” and a distraction.

Meanwhile, ShotSpotter is in revival mode, spraying PR at anyone willing to host it or listen to its CEO defend a product that has seen a remarkable downturn over the last couple of years. CEO Ralph Clark was granted an interview with The News Tribune ahead of Tacoma, Washington’s planned test run of its tech.

In that interview, the CEO basically contradicts ShotSpotter’s marketing materials.

It’s not designed to reduce crime. In fact, there’s no single modality that I’m aware of that can reduce violent crime. And I think what it really does take is a collection of tools and a real commitment and process from not only law enforcement, but, frankly, also communities that have a role to play in overall prevention and reduction of violent crime. There’s no panacea to that. And we’re not trying to position our single-tool technology as being the panacea for that. So that’s my first response is that they’re measuring the wrong thing, and a very unrealistic thing. What they should be measuring and looking at is OK, is this a tool that can help bridge the public safety gap that exists when guns are fired, and there’s no call for service and there’s no dispatch? That’s an untenable situation.

That’s a shift in stance from a couple of years ago, when cities first started ditching the tech (and the company got busy suing journalists for reporting facts). When things began to heat up in 2021, ShotSpotter was issuing statements saying that any report or study finding it didn’t contribute to crime reduction or arrests was just wrong, rather than measuring the wrong thing, as the company’s CEO asserts above in his interview.

In its annual report, ShotSpotter said 2021 saw the company’s legal costs increase by 1.3millionandanadditional1.3 million and an additional 1.3millionandanadditional400,000 was spent on public relations.

That additional PR money was directed in part at refuting the blistering wave of criticism and studies questioning ShotSpotter’s efficacy. ShotSpotter has explanations for all of it.

According to the company, the study showing ShotSpotter had no impact on arrests was designed poorly. In the talking points sent to Howard, Greene pointed to a different study by NYU’s Policing Project which found areas in St. Louis with ShotSpotter saw a 30% decline in assaults. That same study, however, found no change in the number of arrests. Data from the Chicago Office of the Inspector General didn’t reveal a flaw with ShotSpotter but rather how the Chicago police use it, the company has said in response.

If this is the result of ShotSpotter realizing it’s been marketing its product incorrectly, then that’s a positive change. But if this is just the company and its PR wing moving the goalposts because they’ve had to weather a few tough years in a row, then we should expect a return to normal once ShotSpotter stops making the news for all the wrong reasons.

Filed Under: gunshot detection, houston, houston pd, houston police department, ralph clark, surveillance
Companies: shotspotter, soundthinking

Cops Talk Council Member Into Changing Her Mind On ShotSpotter With Data That Doesn’t Actually Show It’s Worth Paying For

from the I-think-these-numbers-are-sufficiently...-large dept

ShotSpotter claims its gunshot detection tech is something cities battling gun violence just can’t (almost literally) live without. Data generated by cities paying millions for the tech often says otherwise.

On multiple occasions over the past few years, cities have terminated their contracts with ShotSpotter, citing the tech’s overall uselessness. Cops in Newark, New Jersey ditched the tech after it generated false alarms three-quarters of the time. Another town came to the same conclusion when ShotSpotter produced a 41% false positive rate. The city of San Diego, California refused to renew its $1.5 million contract with the company, claiming the tech did little more than encourage over-policing in areas already subjected to biased police practices.

Perhaps the biggest loss for ShotSpotter came in Chicago, Illinois, a city absolutely plagued with gun violence. An investigation by the PD’s Inspector General came to the following conclusion:

OIG concluded from its analysis that CPD responses to ShotSpotter alerts can seldom be shown to lead to investigatory stops which might have investigative value and rarely produce evidence of a gun-related crime.

[…]

The CPD data examined by OIG does not support a conclusion that ShotSpotter is an effective tool in developing evidence of gun-related crime.

The company continues to tout its success while real-world applications tend to indicate otherwise. In Houston, Texas, lawmakers have been reevaluating the city’s relationship with ShotSpotter. In January 2022, the city’s council voted overwhelmingly to start spending taxpayers’ money on unproven tech. There was only a single dissenting vote.

All but one council member — Letitia Plummer, At-Large Position 4 — voted to approve the contract.

Plummer said she voted “no” because she hasn’t seen any data to indicate the technology would lead to safer communities.

This despite the fact that other council members seemed to have some serious reservations about ShotSpotter, but just decided to go with the flow.

At least two council members who voted to approve the contract Wednesday appeared to agree that the program will likely not prevent gun violence in the city.

Responding to a woman from northeast Houston who testified in support of ShotSpotter, District B Councilmember Tarsha Jackson said she was voting for the technology in response to feedback from constituents.

While the 3.5millionisonlyaroundingerrorinthe[HoustonPD’s3.5 million is only a rounding error in the [Houston PD’s 3.5millionisonlyaroundingerrorintheHoustonPD’s1.02 billion budget (20% of the city’s total budget), there’s no reason local lawmakers should be paying for something that even they agree probably doesn’t work. While Houston legislators gave SpotShotter the green light, San Antonio officials were ditching the program after doing the depressing math that showed the tech was costing taxpayers about $136,500 an arrest.

Given this background and the initial hesitance of council members who ultimately decided to vote in favor of spending money on ShotSpotter, one has to wonder why the lone holdout in the 2022 vote has changed her mind.

Houston City Council Member Letitia Plummer voted against the city of Houston using the gunshot detection system ShotSpotter technology in January 2022 because, she said, the data gave her a negative impression of the technology. Her feelings have since changed.

At the end of last month, when the council had to vote again on funding ShotSpotter in order to fix a clerical error that left them underpaying for the service, technically, Plummer was out of town, so her vote counted as a default “yes.” But in an interview, she said that had she been here, she would have voted in favor anyway.

“According to what I’m seeing, the data is showing positive,” Plummer said. “I believe that it’s working in Houston. This is the data given to us, and it’s all I can go by.”

Really? Because the cited data shows plenty of data, but very little that shows the tech is helping reduce crime.

According to a slide provided by Plummer’s office, since ShotSpotter was implemented in the Southeast Patrol Division in December 2020, the technology has had 5,203 published alerts, leading to 1,026 offense reports, 94 arrests, 63 misdemeanor charges, 4,216 fired cartridges recovered, and 93 guns recovered.

If this is all there is, it isn’t much. 94 arrests on more than 5,000 reported gunshots means the tech’s arrest rate is less than 2%. There’s no mention of felony charges, which leaves only the 63 misdemeanors, something that suggests reported gunshots aren’t leading to meaningful arrests. Recovering 93 guns means nothing without more context. What the stats show is a lot of busywork is being generated by ShotSpotter, but very little of it will have any effect on violent crime.

What the Houston PD handed to Plummer shouldn’t have been enough to change her vote. But that’s what has happened here. And taxpayers are now paying for the image ShotSpotter has cultivated for itself (fearless high-tech crime fighter!) and the hours wasted by officers rushing to reported gunshots to… um… pick up shell casings and engage in misdemeanor arrests.

Filed Under: guns, gunshot detection, houston, houston pd, letititia plummer, texas, wasteful spending
Companies: shotspotter

Houston PD Drops Cases Tainted By Corrupt Narcotics Officers, But Decides It Can Still Keep Seized Cash

from the HPD:-this-cash-did-nothing-wrong dept

In 2019, Houston police officers — relying on information generated by narcotic squad office Gerald Goines (who is now facing multiple criminal charges) — raided the home of Rhogena Nicholas and Dennis Tuttle. Both occupants of the home were killed during the raid — one predicated on lies from Officer Goines. The fallout resulted in the suspension of the drug unit Goines worked for, as well as the indictment of 11 more officers from the PD’s narcotics unit.

In response to this exposure of corruption and rights violations, the DA’s office opened up a review of the 1,400 cases Goines was linked to. This soon expanded to other cases involving the Houston PD’s narcotics unit — a unit that had apparently been allowed to go rogue under the theory that the ends will ultimately justify the means.

Convictions and cases have been dropped. But, as the Houston Chronicle reports, that doesn’t mean the Houston PD is willing to return property (read: cash) seized during possibly bogus raids and arrests. (h/t Jacob Sullum of Reason)

Following the Harding Street raid prosecutors have dismissed more than two dozen of Goines’s still-active cases and identified about 70 past convictions dependent on his testimony alone. At least five of those have been overturned because of evidence he lied.

But with property confiscated by Goines and his team, “Prosecutors are currently reviewing several cases related to Squad 15 to determine if they involve assets that should be returned to members of the community,” said Dane Schiller, spokesman for the Harris County District Attorney’s Office.

Oh, so the property did nothing wrong? Is that the theory? Because the officers obviously did something wrong. Repeatedly. But the cash is somehow untainted, even if those who seized it are? This is some extremely convenient rationalizing by the DA’s office, which feels cops should be punished, but victims of bad cops should perhaps lose their property forever.

That would include Houston resident Andrew Hebert, who had $11,000 seized from him by officer Gerald Goines. As the Houston Chronicle notes, Herbert’s criminal charges have been tossed. But the Houston PD has yet to return the “evidence” of now nonexistent criminal activity. The DA’s office has officially said (in a letter to Hebert’s lawyer) that things are too fucked to continue prosecuting the case. Nevertheless, the DA’s office has apparently decided the money is still too guilty to cut loose.

Cognitive dissonance is the official stance of Houston prosecutors.

The records show Harris County retained nearly $75,000, as well as several vehicles from the operations even as it has determined many of the criminal charges stemming from the raids were too problematic to pursue.

The confiscations represent only a small slice of the money seized over the years by officers now suspected of dishonest policing. The records are based on five years of case logs from the district attorney’s office — the period the agency retains the records. The tainted Squad 15 members were relieved of duty in early 2019, leaving only about two years of records available for inspection.

A dearth of records makes it impossible to tell how much property the DA’s office and Houston PD has retained from tainted cases. And the lack of valid criminal charges really doesn’t matter much. The DA’s office can still pursue civil asset forfeiture — something that doesn’t require a conviction to convert citizens’ property into government windfall. Overall, the Houston PD seizes $3-4 million in cash every year. Most of this is retained by the PD, shared with the DA’s office, and spent at will by the department since it’s not subject to city oversight.

The Houston Chronicle did manage to track down five cases where the DA’s office returned seized property to defendants in cases involving Houston’s disgraced drug squad. But there’s a common denominator — an option that isn’t available to everyone victimized by corrupt Houston cops.

Records show some or all of the money confiscated during the busts was returned in five cases — typically after defendants hired lawyers to challenge the forfeitures.

This is severely screwed up. The DA’s office is supposed to serve justice, not its own ends. It has publicly stated its dismay at the narcotic squad’s actions and pursued criminal charges against officers. But when it comes to cash taken from people abused by police officers, the DA’s office is extremely reluctant to return any of its ill-gotten windfall to the people it claims to serve.

Filed Under: civil asset forfeiture, houston, houston pd, leglaized theft

Houston Passes Ordinance Forcing Businesses To Install Cameras, Provide Warrantless Access To Recordings

from the fighting-crime-by-oppressing-citizens dept

Citing a post-pandemic shutdown surge in violent crime and some other shaky reasoning, the city council of Houston, Texas has decided the time has come to violate the rights of business owners. Here’s Elizabeth Nolan Brown for Reason:

Officials in Houston, Texas, have voted to require an array of businesses—including bars, convenience stores, and strip clubs—to install surveillance cameras and make footage from them readily available to police. The dystopian move is a transparently unconstitutional attempt by city leaders to circumvent Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.

To access video from the cameras, police officers will not need a warrant.

Here’s how the city council justifies its decision to increase the expenses of some Houston business owners while simultaneously eliminating their Fourth Amendment rights.

The City Attorney and Chief of Police for the Houston Police Department recommend that City Council approve an Ordinance amending Chapter 28 of the Code of Ordinances to add a new Article XXI, containing Sections 28-671 through 673, and to add a new Section 28-411.

As background, the City of Houston has experienced an increase of violent crimes due to the pandemic, social anxiety and economic uncertainty, open carry law and a strained criminal justice system resulting in a criminal backlog of cases. The City of Houston Code of Ordinances does not currently require that owners and operators of bars, nightclubs, sexually oriented businesses, convenience stores, and game rooms provide exterior video coverage of their buildings.

The first paragraph makes it clear no businesses were asking for this imposition, despite also being victims (directly or indirectly) of the increase in violent crimes.

The second paragraph provides a list of several possible contributors to this crime rate increase, none of which will be addressed by this new law. The pandemic, social anxiety, and economic uncertainty go ignored. The open carry law, passed in late 2021 and opposed by many Texas law enforcement agencies, may be a contributing factor but the law has not been in place long enough to assess its contribution to Houston crime rates. And the “strained justice system” is something Houston has apparently dealt with for more than a half-decade without making any progress.

The solution to a bunch of problems that seem unrelated to the targeted businesses is to make the businesses pay for the proposed solution while eliminating part of their rights. It’s a pretty heavy ask from the city.

The purpose of the proposed amendment to Chapter 28, Miscellaneous Offenses and Provisions, is to establish a requirement for bars, nightclubs, sexually oriented businesses, convenience stores, and game rooms to install exterior security cameras providing video coverage from the exterior of the building to the property line. The ordinance lists technical specifications for the cameras, which must operate at all times. The ordinance also requires convenience stores to place lighting, at least six foot-candles in brightness, in any place to which customers are permitted access. The lighting must be turned on between sunset and sunrise and shall not be directed onto residential properties.

The camera and lighting requirements are to take effect on the 90th day following passage and approval of this ordinance. Additionally, the ordinance requires that a camera owner or operator store video footage for no less than 30 days, and provide HPD with the footage within 72 hours of a request.

This demand that businesses purchase, maintain, and deploy camera systems that fit these specifications — as well as provide warrantless access to any recordings police express an interest in — is further justified by even more disingenuous statements by the city.

The collaboration between local businesses and law enforcement to leverage technology will prove invaluable in the efforts to better identify and apprehend persons alleged to have committed violent crimes.

“Collaboration” generally means entities working together to achieve a common goal, rather than one entity forcing several other entities to comply with its demands or be subject to $500/day fines.

There is no impact to the fiscal budget or no additional spending authority.

Well, sure… not when you offload the entire cost to the private sector. It’s easy to limit government spending when you make citizens open their own wallets to purchase government-mandated surveillance equipment.

This new law won’t continue to remain cost-neutral for long. The ACLU has already stated the new law is unconstitutional. So has the Institute for Justice, which has called on the city to ditch the law before it’s enacted. These are the kinds of statements that proceed lawsuits, which will definitely impact the fiscal budget. While certain kinds of businesses are subject to closer regulation, a blanket ordinance that treats a large variety of businesses as contributors to Houston’s crime problem isn’t going to survive a courtroom challenge.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, houston, houston pd, police, surveillance, surveillance cameras, texas

Internal Investigation Shows The Houston PD's Narcotics Units Was An Unsupervised Mess

from the enforcing-the-law-by-breaking-most-of-it dept

The Houston PD decided to take a look at itself after a botched drug raid ended with two people killed by officers. The raid was predicated on pure bullshit. Officer Gerald Goines turned two Houston residents into dangerous drug traffickers by using a nonexistent confidential informant, drugs Goines had stashed in his squad car, and a narrative unsupported by any actual facts. Claims of heroin trafficking by a violent drug dealer were undercut by the raid itself, which turned up no heroin or the gun the (fake) informant claimed he saw.

Officer Goines is now former officer Goines. He’s facing multiple state and federal charges, including two counts of felony murder. This sort of thing doesn’t just happen. It’s not an anomaly formed in a pristine environment. The almost-nonexistent oversight of the Houston PD’s drug warriors led directly to Goines’ deadly concoctions. An internal review of the drug unit by the Houston PD shows officers operated with indifference, carelessness, and negligence. Officer Goines may have been the worst of the 175 officers, but he was far from the only one abusing the system to engage in unsupervised drug warrior freelancing. (via Grits For Breakfast)

The report’s authors wrote that while reviewing Goines and Bryant’s casework from 2016 to 2019, they found 404 errors and a “high level of administrative errors and overall lack of attention to detail” while completing required paperwork.

Auditors found that in the 84 casefiles they reviewed, Goines submitted evidence late 48 percent of the time (40 times) and made unauthorized informant payments 18 times. A quarter of the cases he filed — 21 — did not have tactical plans, the critical documents that officers create showing how they plan to carry out a search warrant raid.

Four times, investigators found cases with no search warrant on file. Three cases included problems where there was inadequate documentation about the case’s informant. Two dozen cases lacked case review sheets. Auditors found discrepancies in Goines’ expenses 23 times. In two cases, there were discrepancies in evidence, and another two cases, evidence submission slips were missing.

The full report [PDF] breaks this down by officer. It appears Officers Goines and Bryant had developed a working relationship that made bending/breaking rules easier. When working together, they relied heavily on “controlled buys.” This made it easier to obtain cash from supervisors who seemed unwilling to ask questions — even when the officers failed to submit paperwork or justify expenditures. In some cases, it appears payments to CIs were broken up into smaller chunks to avoid mandated supervisory reviews. In other cases, Goines and Bryant did not get approval for payments or paid well above the going rate for information leading to very small drug busts.

The sloppiness of officers’ work was indirectly encouraged by the indifference of their supervisors.

The audit also found “overwhelmingly” the need to improve administrative procedures, specifically, supervisory review of case files and case tracking. About 25 percent of the time, supervisors failed to sign case file review sheets, and auditors found many cases were turned in six months to a year late — far longer than the 10 working days allotted by policy.

And the problems go all the way to the top. Police Chief Art Acevedo has been holding onto this report for weeks, refusing to allow the public to see just how corrupt and unrestrained his narcotics division is. Acevedo finally released the report (via Twitter) after the Houston Chronicle released a series of articles discussing the department’s lack of transparency. This unconventional release may have been additionally prompted by another set of criminal charges being brought against police officers by the Houston DA.

Prosecutors probing a Houston police narcotics unit announced charges against six former officers tied to a fatal 2019 drug raid. Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg accused the former officers of lying on police reports and other documents as part of a scheme to enrich themselves.

[…]

Besides the new charges Goines and Bryant face, Ogg announced charges against former HPD Lt. Robert Gonzales, Sgts. Clemente Reyna and Thomas Wood and Goines’ old partner.

It appears several officers and supervisors in the Houston Police Department feel this isn’t going to end well for them. They’re getting out before the department gets to them.

In the months after the raid, Goines retired from HPD. Bryant also retired, along with Goines’ other former partner, Hodgie Armstrong. Three supervisors — Sgt. Clemente Reyna, Sgt. Tommy Woods and Lt. Robert Gonzales also retired. Former Narcotics Commander Paul Follis was transferred to a different post, the Hobby Airport Division.

There’s some good news at the end of all of this. Some reforms are now in place to reduce the likelihood of this sort of tragedy repeating itself. A supervisor is now required to be on the scene during warrant deployment. No-knock warrants have to be approved by the chief himself (or his “designee”). Officers can no longer use municipal court judges for warrant approval. And, finally, body cameras are mandatory for all drug warrant service. They must be activated before officers leave their vehicles and cannot be shut off until the scene and all suspects are secured. All evidence collected must be logged and photographed. All interactions with informants must be documented and, more importantly, all informants will be subject to periodic background checks and random face-to-face interviews with PD supervisors.

This may fix some things going forward. But a more permanent solution would be to dismantle the current unit and reform it using other officers — officers who’ve proven worthy of trust. Officers who’ve been in a system this devoid of oversight and accountability are pretty much ruined. They need to be given the shortest leash and the least amount of responsibility until they’ve proven they can handle more. Without a major overhaul, the next horrendous abuse of power is still an inevitability.

Filed Under: drug raise, gerlad goines, houston, houston pd, narcotics unit

Texas Court Says City, PD Must Answer Questions About Botched Drug Raid Led By A Crooked Cop

from the start-talking dept

The Houston Police Department’s botched drug raid that resulted in the killing of the home’s two occupants continues to cause problems for the PD and the city of Houston. The raid was predicated on a phone call from an unbalanced, vengeful neighbor with a history of calling in bogus crime reports. Probable cause was bolstered (if that’s even the word) by dirty cop Gerald Goines, who fabricated a confidential informant and provided evidence for drug trafficking allegations by pulling heroin from the console of his cop car.

The end result was the execution of Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas — a couple who had been together for 21 years and whose house contained nothing more than personal use amounts of marijuana and cocaine. There was no evidence of the heroin dealing alleged by Goines’ nonexistent informant.

Goines is now facing murder charges and a handful of other felony charges. The PD’s drug task force has been disbanded. And Rhogena Nicholas’ mother — who was at one point falsely named as the person behind the anonymous tip Goines supposedly received — is suing the city for its failure to properly oversee the police department. (via Courthouse News)

The city has so far refused to cooperate with the lawsuit. Nicholas wants to depose city officials about the raid but the city has chosen to continue its stonewalling and obfuscation. The city (and the PD) have done everything they can to avoid giving Nicholas anything to work with, starting immediately after it became clear the raid wasn’t justified and had been led by an incredibly dirty cop. Here’s the Texas appeals court’s description [PDF] of the city’s post-raid recalcitrance:

After the Harding Street Incident, the City did not contact Petitioners and did not respond to Petitioners’ request to publicly correct or retract what Petitioners contended were factually incorrect statements. For example, Rhogena’s neighbor provided a cell phone video that suggested a different account of what happened at the Harding Street home than that set forth by the City. The City has resisted efforts by Petitioners to secure the 911 records related to the Harding Street Incident. Moreover, HPD has refused to disclose what physical materials may have been removed from the scene.

Weird. I always thought this was something guilty people did — you know, “nothing to hide, nothing to fear,” etc. I understand there’s no reason to hand plaintiffs ammo to use against you, but the city was unwilling to do anything to correct the record even before it was sued.

The order also points to the independent forensic examination of the crime scene which made it clear Houston PD investigators were either horrifyingly inept or trying to cover something up.

Petitioners retained an independent forensic investigator to conduct an independent investigation at the Harding Street home. After analyzing the scene, the investigator concluded that HPD failed to conduct a full ballistic recovery and left significant forensic materials untouched and unrecovered, preventing a full reconstruction of the incident.

The plaintiffs also pointed out a legitimate investigation includes confidential informants that actually exist and controlled drug buys that actually occurred. None of that happened here and Nicholas alleges the city and PD officials continued to refer to the residence as a “drug house” even when it presumably had been made aware of Goines’ fakery.

And there was oh so much lying by Gerald Goines.

Petitioners further plead that local news media revealed that in the last 109 cases filed by Gerald Goines based on a sworn affidavit in support of a search warrant: “In every one of those cases in which he claimed confidential informants observed guns inside, no weapons were ever recovered, according to evidence logs Goines filed with the court.” On this basis, Petitioners request the depositions of the two HPD managers responsible for oversight of Gerald Goines in the HPD Narcotics Division.

The city and the PD argued the court had no jurisdiction to tell it to comply with these pre-trial discovery requests. The appeals court says the government is wrong.

[T]he statutory probate court has subject matter jurisdiction over the anticipated action under the Estates Code. Hence, the trial court did not err in denying the City’s plea to the jurisdiction regarding the Rule 202 proceeding. […] The City’s issue is overruled.

The city and PD will have to face questions from the relatives of people officers killed during a completely unjustified drug raid. Good. They have a lot to answer for. And the more they talk, the more obvious it will be no one in power really cares how the Drug War is carried out, just as long as it never stops.

Filed Under: dennis tuttle, drug raid, gerald goines, houston, houston pd, rhogena nicholas, texas

Houston Police Officer Who Led Botched Raid That Killed Two People Now Facing Felony Murder Charges

from the some-of-the-best-criminals-are-cops dept

The increasingly-awful story of the Houston Police Department’s botched drug raid continues to develop. Earlier this year, the Houston PD raided the house of Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas. By the time the bullets stopped flying, the couple of 21 years was dead.

The raid was predicated on a tip from a confidential informant who said he saw lots of heroin and some guns in the residence while performing a controlled buy. No heroin was found. The gun described by the informant was never found. What was found was personal use amounts of marijuana and cocaine, neither of which were mentioned by the informant.

The informant never existed. The heroin supposedly purchased from the residence actually came from the console of an officer’s police car. The affidavit obtained by Officer Gerald Goines was apparently filled with lies about a controlled drug buy that never happened and statements from an informant who had never visited the Tuttle residence. The actual tip the officers acted on was one phoned in by Rhogena Nicholas’ mother, who complained about the couple using drugs in their house.

Goines wasn’t the only liar. Other officers on the scene lied as well. The narrative officers presented was one of being greeted by weapon-wielding residents during the no-knock raid. An independent forensic examination of the home contradicted many of the claims made by officers in their reports.

The police chief finally distanced himself from the officers’ actions, but only after enough information had come to light to show everything about the raid was a lie. Investigations have been opened on the PD and the officers involved. The two officers who led the raid are having their past investigations examined by the PD and the DA’s office says this could affect as many as 14,000 cases. Not that the Houston PD is exactly being cooperative. The DA’s office has had to threaten legal action to get the department to turn over paperwork linked to Officer Gerald Goines and Officer Steven Bryant.

These officers are no longer facing multiple investigations into the drug task force work. They’re now facing criminal charges as well.

Gerald Goines, the ex-Houston police officer who led the controversial no-knock raid on Harding Street, has been charged with two counts of felony murder, as KHOU 11 Investigates reporter Jeremy Rogalski first reported.

His attorney, Nicole DeBorde, said Goines was surprised by the charges.

Goines surrendered Friday afternoon and his bond was set at $150,000 on each charge. Goines made bond Friday evening.

He is required to wear a GPS monitor and won’t be allowed to have weapons or leave Harris County.

His partner in cop crime isn’t facing murder charges, but is on just as short a leash as Goines.

Former Officer Steven Bryant, who was involved with the Harding Street warrant, is charged with second-degree tampering with a government document. His bond was set at $50,000. He will also wear a GPS monitor and can’t leave Harris or Fort Bend counties.

Meanwhile, the HPD chief continues to reassure himself this isn’t the tip of a corroded iceberg, but rather just an anomaly he can go back to ignoring when the press finds something else to occupy itself with.

However, Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo believes it’s not a department wide problem.

“We’ve been looking at a lot of cases and we have yet to see it again, any evidence of any systemic issues,” Acevedo said.

Maybe no cop on the force is as awful as these two. But cops don’t just go straight from the academy to falsifying affidavits and engaging in deadly raids over drugs that came from a cop car, rather than a crime scene. They start small. And if no one stops them, it eventually grows to something that can’t be contained. Chief Acevedo needs to dig a little deeper. If he’s not seeing anything, it’s not because it’s not there. It’s because he’s not really looking for it.

Filed Under: dennis tuttle, houston, houston pd, police, raid, rhogena nicholas

Fatal Houston PD Drug Raid Apparently Predicated On Drugs A Cop Had Stashed In His Car

from the this-is-insane dept

The ugly Houston PD drug raid that resulted in four injured officers and two dead “suspects” just keeps getting uglier.

Officers swore a confidential informant purchased heroin from 59-year-old Dennis Tuttle in the house he shared with his wife of 21 years, Rhogena Nicholas. They swore the CI told them the house was filled with heroin packaged for purchase.

On the strength of this confidential informant’s claims, officers obtained a no-knock warrant and raided Tuttle’s house. The officers claimed Tuttle opened fire on them and that his wife tried to grab a shotgun from a downed officer. This was the supposed reason for SWAT team’s killing of Tuttle and Nicholas.

This was the narrative everyone was given. Not a single officer was wearing a body cam, despite the department possessing dozens of them. The only footage that survived — captured by a neighbor’s security camera — was confiscated by the Houston PD.

Even in this vacuum of information, the PD’s narrative quickly fell apart. No large amounts of heroin were found during the raid — just personal use quantities of heroin cocaine and marijuana. The inventory also included a few guns, which the PD has treated as inherent evidence of criminality despite the fact both Tuttle and his wife could legally own the weapons found in the house. The only criminal history either of them had was an old misdemeanor charge for a bad check.

Now that the PD’s investigation into this raid is underway, it’s becoming clear the official narrative — a daring no-knock raid that took out dangerous heroin dealers — isn’t going to survive. The new narrative already includes multiple lies by police officers and a lot of supporting evidence.

First off, the raid inventory does not include the weapon officers claimed Tuttle fired at them.

The other four items in the inventory are guns: a 20-gauge Beretta ALS shotgun, a 12-gauge Remington 1100 shotgun, a Remington 700 bolt-action rifle, and a .22-caliber Winchester 190 semi-automatic rifle. The list does not include the .357 Magnum revolver that police say Tuttle fired at the officers who broke into his home, shot his dog, and killed his wife.

It also doesn’t include the money the CI paid for the heroin or the weapon he claimed Tuttle was carrying.

Nor does it mention the 9mm semi-automatic handgun that the C.I. supposedly saw in the house the day before, which apparently disappeared along with the heroin and the money.

The PD also claimed the investigation was initiated by an anonymous call claiming the couple were selling drugs from their house. Since that initial press salvo by Chief Art Acevedo, information has come out indicating the “tip” was neither anonymous nor did it reference drug dealing.

A 911 call from the mother of now-deceased suspect Rhogena Nicholas put 7815 Harding Street on police radar. Sources close to the investigation say her mother called reporting the 58-year-old was doing drugs inside her own home.

It only gets worse. According to statements from officers now under investigation, it appears the Houston PD raided a house, shot a dog, and killed two people over drugs a police officer had stashed in his vehicle. (As is pointed out in the comments, the current version of the Chronicle’s article has reworded these two paragraphs slightly. Here’s a link to an archived version containing this pull quote.)

In the original warrant – the one used to justify the raid – [Officer Gerald] Goines wrote that he watched the buy and, along with Bryant, identified the substance as heroin. But when investigators went back to talk to [Officer Steven] Bryant, he admitted that he’d actually just retrieved two bags of heroin from the center console of Goines’ car, at the instruction of another officer.

Though he then took the two bags of drugs for testing to determine that they were heroin, he eventually admitted that he had never seen narcotics in question before retrieving them from the car. That, the investigator noted, contradicts the search warrant affidavit filed before the raid, which indicates that Bryant “recognized the substance purchased by the CI as heroin.”

This is absolutely terrifying. Investigators can’t seem to locate the informant both officers claimed was a reliable source of intel, which suggests this person — relied on in other Houston PD investigations — doesn’t even exist. None of the CIs interviewed by Houston investigators said they’d made the purchase detailed in the warrant affidavit.

How do citizens protect themselves against police officers willing to fabricate every aspect of an investigation in order to perform armed raids of their houses? Legally owning weapons means nothing when cops (and many courts) consider homeowners defending themselves from armed intruders a crime in and of itself. Two people are dead and no amount of late-arriving indictments is going to change that. Officers took a concerned mother’s call about her daughter’s drug use and turned it into a criminal conspiracy involving heroin and dangerous drug pushers armed to the teeth.

We have to grant law enforcement a massive amount of power in order for them to do their job. Time after time, they abuse the powers we’ve given them, wielding them like weapons against the same citizens they’re supposed to answer to. Vast power has been paired with nearly nonexistent accountability to create an atmosphere where officers feel comfortable manufacturing evidence to support their adrenaline habits. This should be nightmare fuel for all Americans. Unfortunately, outside of those already attuned to the miserable state of American policing, this will appear to be nothing more than a couple of bad apples they can safely ignore.

Filed Under: dennis tuttle, gerald goines, heroin, houston, houston pd, no knock warrant, police, rhogena nicholas, steven bryant, swat team

After No-Knock Raid Goes Horribly Wrong, Police Union Boss Steps Up To Threaten PD's Critics

from the garbage-in,-garbage-out-apparently dept

Four Houston police officers were shot — allegedly by now-dead suspects — while serving a no-knock warrant on a Houston residence. The no-knock warrant was supposed to make everything safer for the officers, giving them a chance to get a jump on the suspects and prevent the destruction of evidence/officers. But as anyone other than cops seems to comprehend, startling people in their own homes with explosives and kicked-in doors tends to make everything more dangerous for everyone.

Operating on a tip that from someone claiming to have purchased heroin from the home of Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas, the Houston PD SWAT team secured a no-knock warrant and kicked in the door roughly five hours later. No heroin was found. Some guns and an apparently small amount of cocaine and marijuana were recovered. According to cops, the 59-year-old Tuttle opened fire on officers and his wife tried to take a shotgun from a downed officer, resulting in her being killed as well. The married couple are now dead, having amassed a combined 21 years of marriage and a single criminal charge — a misdemeanor bad check charge — between them before this raid ended their lives.

The cops have vouched for the reliability of their confidential informant despite there being a huge discrepancy between what the CI told them and what was actually found in the house.

According to the affidavit, the informant said he bought the powder from the middle-aged man, who called it “boy,” a street name for heroin. The informant also said that the man carried a gun, and that there was more of the brown powder at the house, “packaged in a large quantity of plastic baggies.” The author of the affidavit wrote that the informant had “proven to be credible and reliable on many prior occasions” and he asked a municipal court judge “to enter the suspected place and premises without first knocking and announcing the presence and purpose of the officers executing the warrant.”

The dead couple cannot provide a narrative, so the one we’re stuck with comes from the Houston PD.

“Once the officers breached the door and the gunfire began from the suspects, one of the suspects actually retreated momentarily to the back of the room and then that suspect came back and again engaged the officers in gunfire,” Acevedo said at a Monday evening news conference.

Maybe some footage survived the shootout…

[Chief Acevedo] said none of the officers was wearing a body camera.

It’s not that the Houston PD doesn’t have cameras. It’s just that officers wear them when they want to and activate them only when they want to. It appears no one in the department has stepped up to hold officers accountable for failing to follow policy. So, only one story survives this shooting: the PD’s account.

There might have been a second version covering some of the raid, but the PD took care of that as well.

[K]HOU, the CBS affiliate in Houston, reports that the house had no security cameras, although “a house next door to the Tuttles’ home does have surveillance video,” and “police took that footage for evidence.”

As is to be expected, this deadly raid has led to criticism of the police department and its tactics. It started with a CI tip about an illegal substance that wasn’t found during the search and ended with four cops wounded and two people with no criminal history shot dead in the home they had lived in for twenty years.

The criticism is well-earned. But the head of the city’s police union believes the police have done no wrong — not in this case and possibly not ever.

Houston Police Department Union president Joe Gamaldi went a step further, calling out people who criticize the police. “We are sick and tired of having targets on our back,” Gamaldi said at a press conference on Monday night outside of the hospital where the injured officers were being treated. (All four survived their injuries.) “We are sick and tired of having dirtbags trying to take our lives when all we’re trying to do is protect this community and protect our families. Enough is enough. **If you’re the ones out there spreading the rhetoric that police officers are the enemy, well just know we’ve all got your number now. We’re going to be keeping track on all of y’all, and we’re going to make sure to hold you accountable every time you stir the pot on our police officers.**”

This statement says a lot about the mindset of law enforcement. Officers appear to believe that because they do a job few people want to, they shouldn’t be criticized for how they do it.

But the statement says something much more worrying about how police officers and their representation respond to criticism. Gamaldi’s statement suggests the Houston PD will be keeping tabs on its critics. He’s basically saying the government agency employing the people he represents is willing to retaliate against protected speech. That’s not something the Houston PD can do (at least not legally) and it’s something it shouldn’t do, even if some officers feel they might be able to get away with it. If the PD is willing to violate the Constitution when it’s publicly criticized, it’s probably willing to do it during its more private ventures. Ultimately, this statement says more about the PD than its critics, and what it does say is pretty ugly.

Filed Under: dennis tuttle, houston, houston pd, houston police, joe gamaldi, no knock, no knock raid, police, police killings, rhogena nicholas, swat, warrants