Plain Old Justice

Houston Police Squad 15: Licensed to Kill?

 By K. W. Locke

    It's night. You are asleep beside your spouse.

    Without warning, armed men batter in the door. One of them, wielding a shotgun, shoots and kills your dog, who wasn't attacking.

    As you scream, a bullet strikes you. Slowly and painfully, you die. The men kill your spouse, too.

    You hadn't expected to die so young. What did you do to deserve it?

    Nothing.

     You couldn't tell by looking, but the intruders were cops, members of the Houston Police Department's notorious Narcotics Squad 15.  They came armed not only with guns but also a no-knock search warrant authorizing them to break into the home without announcing they were police.

    Now, two of the cops will stand trial for murdering you and your spouse, and 10 other members of Squad 15  have been charged with other felonies.  The FBI also arrested three of them on federal charges.

      The victims of this deadly raid had committed no crimes.   One of them, Dennis Tuttle, a disabled Navy veteran, managed to reach a gun he kept nearby and tried to defend himself and his wife.  Amazingly, before dying he wounded 4 of the intruders.

    Good thing.  If he hadn't, the truth about Squad 15 would have remained hidden, allowing it to continue a 10-year crime spree.

    One of the wounded cops, Gerald Goines, had taken a round in the face and could not speak. Lying in a hospital bed, he answered questions by writing notes.  But his answers were inconsistent, revealing that he had lied on the affidavit he signed to obtain the no-knock search warrant.

    In the affidavit, Goines had sworn that a confidential informant had told him she had purchased drugs from the victims. But at the hospital, when asked to identify the informant, he admitted there was none.

    Goines then claimed he’d purchased the drugs himself. That, too, was a lie. The victims weren't drug dealers and had sold him no drugs.  

    Goines had decided to seek the warrant when given vague hearsay by a woman with long criminal record, but had done nothing to verify the truth of what she said.  Instead of facts, he had filled the affidavit with lies.

    This wasn't the first time.   Last year, the district attorney agreed in court that Goines had lied, and had withheld evidence, in a 2011 case.  An innocent man spent years in prison.  Goines may have done so in other cases as well.

    A grand jury has charged Goines and another officer, Felipe Gallegos, with murder and other members of Squad 15 with tampering with government documents and other offenses.  Goines and Gallegos also face federal charges for violating the victims' civil rights.

    The lethal raid took place on January 28, 2019.  Two years later, the families - Dennis Tuttle and his wife, Rhogena Nicholas - filed separate lawsuits in federal court.

    The civil complaint filed by Nicholas’ relatives pulled no punches.  It began:

Murder, corruption, lies, sex, and perjury – the history of the Houston Police Department, and in particular, the Houston Police Department’s (“HPD”) Narcotics Squad 15, plays out like a scene from Training Day. As approved and encouraged by the leaders of the City of Houston, Squad 15 operated as a criminal organization and tormented Houston residents for years by depriving their rights to privacy, dignity, and safety. This misconduct included (1) a  long list of illegal search warrants obtained by perjury, (2) false statements submitted to cover-up the fraudulent warrants, (3) a sexual relationship between an informant and police officer, (4) improper payments to informants, (5) illegal and unconstitutional invasions of homes, (6) a long-list of illegal arrests and excessive force against Houston citizens, and, ultimately, (7) the murder of Rhogena Nicholas and DennisTuttle.

    Nicholas’ family brought suit under a federal civil rights law enacted after the Civil War in response to violence by the Ku Klux Klan.  The Supreme Court has held that, under this law, a city is not responsible for a police officer’s misconduct unless the plaintiff can prove one of three things.  The plaintiff must show that the officer’s misconduct resulted from following an official policy, a custom, even if unwritten, or that the department had failed to train the officer properly.

    Therefore, the 52-page complaint went into great detail, describing not only how Goines had lied in the affidavit leading up to the raid, but also how Squad 15 had broken the law over and over.

    Of course, this isn’t the only time cops have gone rogue.  This blog will report other instances in future posts.

  Drug War Gives Police the Motive and Means

     A formula for tragedy:  Give just about anyone the motive and the means, and take away consequences.  Add a dab of self-righteousness.  Stir and wait.

    The war on drugs provides a motive and, often, a crusader's zeal.  In the insular, us-against-them culture of police departments, self-righteousness can grow like a fungus.

    A no-knock warrant provides the means.

    So, you see the pattern over and over.  And all over.  Late last month, the Supreme Court of the State of Washington issued an opinion which began:

    On January 5, 2011, at 9:45 a.m., eight Tacoma police officers broke open the door of a Federal Way apartment with a battering ram.  They had a search warrant, and they expected to find Matthew Logstrom, a young drug dealer living in a somewhat unkempt apartment.  Instead, they awakened Kathleen Mancini:  an older nurse living in a well-kept home, who had been sleeping after working the night shift.  The police nevertheless handcuffed Mancini and took her, without shoes and wearing only a nightgown, outside while they searched.

    A confidential informant had given an officer vague information about drug dealing.  Usually, before seeking a warrant, the detective would have done surveillance to make sure he had the right apartment, and then would have had an informant make a controlled drug buy.  But he skipped those steps and sought a warrant.

    He also skipped going through the prosecutor's office and went directly to a judge.

    Fortunately, no one died.  This time, the cops "only" handcuffed a woman and made her stand outside in her nightgown.  In January.

    Compared to being killed, that's small potatoes.  But, compared to being killed, just about anything is small potatoes.

    The best part of the story is that the Washington state legislature already had passed a law repealing municipal sovereign immunity.  

    So, the woman sued the police.  And won.

What Can We Do?

    Other states should likewise repeal municipal sovereign immunity, but that's a hard sell in the legislature.  What else can be done?

    One good step would be to require police always to go to a prosecutor when seeking a search warrant.  Another step forward would be limit what judges can issue no-knock warrants.  The lowest-level courts - municipal courts and other courts not "of record" - should not have that authority.  It should be given only to courts of record, and of general jurisdiction.