IT LOOKS LIKE THE DA WANTS TO INVESTIGATE THE NARCOTICS OPERATION OF HPD

DA Threatens to Subpoena Houston Police in Drug Raid

By St. John Barned and Keri Blakinger

Houston Chronicle
June 21, 2019

HOUSTON -- Harris County prosecutors are threatening to issue grand jury subpoenas to the Houston Police Department for details about confidential informants used by narcotics officers at the center of the botched Harding Street drug raid in January that ended with two residents dead and five officers injured.

After police failed to fulfill a previous request for the information in May, Harris County Assistant District Attorney Natasha Sinclair sent a one-page letter Thursday demanding HPD turn over a trove of information relating to the bust, including the identities of informants used by Squad 15 since 2014, the names of those who signed off on informant payments and details about alleged buys.

"It has been more than six weeks since we requested this material in preparation for possible presentation to a grand jury," wrote Sinclair, who heads the district attorney's civil rights division. "We have yet to receive confidential informant information on the specific incident reports requested."

The demand letter comes amid escalating tensions between police and Harris County prosecutors and suggests that the police department has dragged its feet in providing records despite promises from Chief Art Acevedo for an open and transparent investigation.

The letter also indicates the DA's office may be conducting a wider review than the internal investigation by HPD and a readiness to involve a grand jury in the process.

Acevedo responded hours later Thursday to the letter with a statement saying police had turned over their investigation into the shooting in mid-May and pledged to continue to work with prosecutors.

"From the outset of the incident at 7815 Harding Street, the Houston Police Department has worked cooperatively with the Harris County District Attorney's Office and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to ensure no stone is left unturned to determine the facts in this matter," Acevedo said in the statement.

"Additionally we responded to all of the requests specifically related to the aforementioned investigations," the chief said. "With regard to the additional records sought by the HCDAO not specifically related to the Harding Street incident and dating back many years, HPD has and will continue to work cooperatively with the HCDAO."

The district attorney's office, however maintains that the requested records about Squad 15 are relevant to their probe of the failed raid.

The ramifications of the raid continue to unfurl nearly five months after police burst through the front door at 7815 Harding Street and kicked off a shoot-out that ended in the deaths of homeowners Dennis Tuttle and his wife, Rhogena Nicholas. The FBI is conducting a civil rights investigation and District Attorney Kim Ogg has launched a review of more than 2,000 cases previously handled by two key narcotics officers.

Police initially said they raided the Pecan Park home in search of heroin dealers, but investigators soon raised questions about whether the alleged informant whose drug buy justified the raid ever existed. And the raid itself only turned up a small amount of cocaine and marijuana — but none of the heroin police expected to find.

In the weeks after the shooting, the case agent at the center of the raid — Gerald Goines — retired under investigation, as did his partner Steven Bryant.

In May, police said they'd completed their investigation into the raid and turned the results over to the district attorney's office. Thursday's letter, however, suggests prosecutors may have hit a roadblock in the investigation.

"As discussed in a May meeting between the Harris County District Attorney's Office Civil Rights Division, the HCDAO Public Corruption Division and the Houston Police Department, our team must review all HPD records related to all confidential informants utilized by officers involved in the Harding Street shooting," Sinclair wrote.

"These records pertain, but are not limited, to such matters as the names of informants, locations of buys, payouts to those informants, who approved those payments and who signed off on any operations. This information is crucial to our ongoing review of hundreds of warrants and controlled buys executed by the HPD Narcotics Division and specifically the Goines investigation."

If police don't turn over the requested information by the end of Monday, Sinclair continued, police "will be served with grand jury subpoenas on Tuesday, June 25, 2019, for the files possessed by the Houston Police Department related to all confidential informants utilized by HPD Narcotics Squad 15 from January 1, 2014 to the present."

The accusations by the DA's office underscored the need for a strong, unbiased, outside investigation, Nicholas family attorney Mike Doyle said.

After the shooting, Doyle hired a private team of forensic specialists who found bullets, shotgun shell casings, and human teeth that crime scene technicians from the Houston Forensic Science Center had missed.

Doyle called the letter from Ogg's office "encouraging," and said it showed prosecutors may be taking a broader view than police would like.

"HPD probably did a great job showing one or two bad apples, but they didn't exist for so long in a vacuum," he said. "And that's the point."

Larry Karson, an associate professor of criminal justice at the University of Houston-Downtown, said the disclosures prosecutors are seeking could upend pending criminal cases or show problems with the department's use of confidential informants.

"HPD's response sounds like they're attempting to conceal something," Karson said. "And that may be related to the shooting — or it may relate to confidential dealings with informants, or policies and procedures in the department, for example."

The letter comes on the heels of a series of escalating public skirmishes between the DA's office and Houston police. On Tuesday, Ogg announced that a grand jury had charged Andre Timothy Jackson in the 2016 killing of 11-year-old Josue Flores based on improved testing of old DNA evidence. Prosecutors charged Jackson soon after the murder, but asked a judge to dismiss the charges because they worried they wouldn't be able to win the case.

After that announcement, Houston Police Officers' Union President Joe Gamaldi criticized Ogg and said prosecutors had failed to oppose a motion allowing Jackson to pick up his belongings seized as evidence — potentially jeopardizing the case.

DA spokesman Dane Schiller responded by saying prosecutors had already secured the evidence they needed, and accused Gamaldi of being uninformed and "misleading the public to draw attention to himself."

Then after police shot an attempted carjacker on Wednesday — only to discover the suspect had received a three-year deferred adjudication for armed robbery — Acevedo blasted prosecutors and judges for not handing out tougher sentences to dangerous criminals.

"Somehow in Harris County we have the judges and sometimes the prosecutors' office thinking it's ok to sometimes giving deferred adjudication to armed robbers," he said at in an impassioned diatribe at the scene.

Professor Phillip Lyons, dean of the college of criminal justice at Sam Houston State University and a former police officer, said the DA's letter on Thursday and the ongoing feud between prosecutors and police undermines the public's faith in the criminal justice system.

"It just seems to me, again, not a good sign about how things are going," he said. "That kind of public attack and counterattack, I think we all lose.'