A second Houston police officer has been charged with murder and is one of additional officers charged as part of an ongoing investigation into a Houston Police Department narcotics unit following a deadly drug attack in 2019prosecutors announced Monday. In all, a dozen officers associated with the narcotics unit have been charged after their work was scrutinized following the January 2019 drug attack that killed Dennis Tuttle, 59, and his wife, Rhogena Nicholas, 58.
“The consequences of corruption are that two innocent ordinary people were murdered in their homes, four police officers were shot, one of them paralyzed and now they will all be faced with Harris County jurors who will decide their fate,” said Harris County District. Attorney Kim Ogg. .
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Agent Felipe Gallegos was charged with murder in Tuttle’s death. If convicted, he risks life in prison, Ogg said.
Rusty Hardin, a lawyer for Gallegos, declined to comment on the case on Monday.
Five other agents were charged Monday for their role in an alleged plan to steal overtime payments as part of their work with the narcotics squad.
Three of the agents – Oscar Pardo, Cedell Lovings and Nadeem Ashraf – are charged with first-degree felony involvement in organized criminal activities related to the theft of a civil servant and tampering with a government file. They can get life in prison if convicted.
Two other officers – Frank Medina and Griff Maxwell – are facing second-degree felonies based on the same charges and can be sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo has said a lead investigator lied in an affidavit justifying the drugs raid. On Monday Acevedo has issued a statement After the new charges were announced, he said the officer charged Monday with murder “was not involved in obtaining the warrant and responded appropriately to the deadly threat” posed during the raid.
Ogg said on Monday that major jurors have also indicted three retired officers charged last year on various charges related to the case. Two of these agents – Clemente Reyna and Thomas Wood – were charged with first-degree felony for committing organized criminal activities related to the theft of a public servant and tampering with a government file. The third retired officer – Hodgie Armstrong – was charged with second-degree felonies based on the same charges.
Two former members of the unit – Gerald Goines and Steven Bryant – had previously been charged in state and federal courts in the case, including two felony counts filed in state court against Goines. Another former officer, Lt. Robert Gonzales was charged last year.
Prosecutors allege their investigation found that the accused agents were part of a unit that falsified documentation of drug payments to confidential informers, routinely used false information to obtain search warrants, and lied on police reports.
Prosecutors have accused Goines of lying to obtain Tuttle and Nicholas’s warrant. Goines alleged that a counselor bought heroin at home. But the informant told investigators that no such drug purchase ever took place, authorities said. Police found small amounts of marijuana and cocaine in the house, but no heroin.
When officers entered the house using a “knock down” order that did not require them to announce themselves before entering, they were greeted with gunfire. Friends of Tuttle and Nicholas say they were not criminals and have suggested that the couple may have thought they were being attacked by intruders.
Five officers, including Goines, were injured in the raid.
In a statement on Monday, Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo blamed Goines and Bryant for the flawed search warrant and said the other agents, including Gallegos, “responded appropriately to the deadly threat presented to them while on duty. ).
A spokesman for the Houston Police Officers’ Union did not immediately send an email on Monday asking for comment. The union previously called the charges against the former officers a political ploy by Ogg.
Lawyers for relatives of Tuttle and Nicholas have conducted their own investigation into the raid and have fought the city and police in court over requests for documents and statements from government officials.
These latest charges corroborate some of the findings of the families’ independent investigation, and again raise two questions: how high is the corruption of (the narcotics squad) and why are the city and (the Houston Police Department) working so hard? fought, still., to hide the basic facts about what happened before, during and after the murderous robbery? ”Michael Doyle, one of the Nicholas family’s attorneys, said in a statement.
Since the raid, prosecutors have investigated thousands of cases handled by the narcotics unit.
More than 160 drug convictions related to Goines have been dismissed by prosecutors.
A July public audit of the narcotics unit found that officers were often not thorough in their investigations and overpaid informants for the seizure of minute amounts of drugs.