Houston's Police Chief Insists That Cops Who Executed a Deadly Drug Raid Based on Lies 'Had Probable Cause to Be There'

Although the warrant was based on a heroin purchase that never happened, Art Acevedo says, there was other, unmentioned evidence that would have justified a search.

Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo insists that the narcotics officers who shot and killed a middle-aged couple on January 28 after breaking into their home "had probable cause to be there," even though they were executing a search warrant that was based on a fraudulent affidavit. Acevedo's position is pretty puzzling, since the sole basis for the no-knock search warrant, which led to a deadly raid that found no evidence of drug dealing, was a "controlled buy" of heroin that he says never happened.

Gerald Goines, the veteran narcotics officer who wrote the affidavit seeking a no-knock search warrant for the house at 7815 Harding Street, was recently charged with two counts of felony murder based on the allegation that his lies led to the deaths of the home's owners, Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas. Goines claimed in the affidavit that a confidential informant had bought black-tar heroin at the Harding Street house the day before the raid. After the operation went horribly wrong, setting off a gun battle that injured Goines and three other officers as well as killing Tuttle and Nicholas, he admitted that no such transaction had occurred. Steven Bryant, a narcotics officer who backed up Goines' story, faces a felony charge of tampering with a government document.

"We didn't need to lie," Acevedo said on August 23, the day that Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg announced the charges against Goines and Bryant. "We could have done this right….When somebody lies to obtain a search warrant, that's a problem." When KPRC, the NBC station in Houston, asked him about his claim, a few weeks after the raid, that "we still had a reason to be at that home," Acevedo replied, "I stand by that. We had probable cause to be there."

It is hard to see how that can be true. According to Acevedo, Goines' investigation of alleged drug dealing at the Harding Street house was triggered by a tip from a patrol officer who had responded to a January 8 call in which an unnamed woman reported that her daughter "was in there doing heroin." At a press conference three days after the raid, Acevedo described the call this way: "The caller wanted to remain anonymous but said that her daughter was inside the residence 'doing drugs, and they have a lot of guns in the residence.' She stated there was also a female in the house." The woman said she had looked through a window, and she saw that "her daughter was in the house, and there were guns and heroin."