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A second Houston police officer has been charged with murder and is among additional officers who have been charged in an ongoing investigation into a Houston Police Department narcotics unit following a 2019 murderous drug raid, prosecutors announced Monday. In all, a dozen officers linked to the Narcotics Unit have been charged after their work was monitored following the January 2019 drug raid in which Dennis Tuttle, 59, and his wife, Rhogena Nicholas , 58, were killed.
“The consequences of the corruption are that two innocent ordinary people were killed in their homes, four police officers were shot, one of them is paralyzed and now all of them will face Harris County jurors who will decide their fate,” Harris District Attorney Kim Ogg said. .
KHOU
Officer Felipe Gallegos was indicted for murder on Tuttle’s death. If found guilty, he faces life in prison, Ogg said.
Rusty Hardin, a lawyer for Gallegos, declined to comment on the case on Monday.
Five other officers were charged on Monday for their role in an alleged scheme to steal overtime payments as part of their work with the narcotics team.
Three of the officers – Oscar Pardo, Cedell Lovings and Nadeem Ashraf – face first-degree felony charges for participating in organized criminal activity related to the theft of an official and tampering with a government record. They risk life imprisonment if found guilty.
Two other officers – Frank Medina and Griff Maxwell – face second degree felony on the same charges and could face up to 20 years in prison if found guilty.
Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo has says a senior investigator lied in an affidavit supporting the drug raid. Monday Acevedo issued a statement after the new charges were announced, the officer charged with murder on Monday “had no involvement in obtaining the warrant and had responded appropriately to the deadly threat” posed during the raid.
Ogg said on Monday that grand jurors also indicted three retired officers who were indicted last year on different charges related to the case. Two of those officers – Clemente Reyna and Thomas Wood – were charged with first degree felony for participating in organized criminal activity related to the theft of an official and the falsification of a government record. The retired third officer – Hodgie Armstrong – has been charged with second degree felons on those same charges.
Two former members of the unit – Gerald Goines and Steven Bryant – had previously been indicted in state and federal court in the case, including two counts of murder in state court against Goines. Another former officer, Lt. Robert Gonzales, was indicted last year.
Prosecutors say their investigation found that the indicted officers were part of a unit that forged documents on drug payments to confidential informants, routinely used false information to obtain search warrants and lied in police reports. police.
Prosecutors accused Goines of lying to obtain the search warrant at the house belonging to Tuttle and Nicholas. Goines claimed that a confidential informant bought heroin at the house. But the informant told investigators no such drug purchase had ever taken place, authorities said. Police found small amounts of marijuana and cocaine in the house, but no heroin.
When officers entered the house using a “no knock” warrant that did not require them to announce themselves before entering, they were greeted with gunfire. Friends of Tuttle and Nicholas say they weren’t criminals and suggested the couple might have thought they were being attacked by intruders.
Five officers, including Goines, were injured in the raid.
In a statement Monday, Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo blamed Goines and Bryant for the flawed search warrant and said the other officers, including Gallegos, “had responded appropriately to the deadly threat that was asked to them during the service (of the mandate) “.
A spokesperson for the Houston Police Union did not immediately return an email seeking comment on Monday. The union has previously called the charges against the former officers a political ploy from Ogg.
Lawyers for Tuttle and Nicholas’ family members conducted their own investigation into the raid and fought the city and the police department in court over document requests and depositions from agency officials.
“These latest indictments confirm some of the findings of the families’ independent investigation and again raise two questions: how bad is the corruption (of the Narcotics Team) and why the city and ( Houston Police) fought so hard, to hide the basic facts about what happened before, during, and after the murderous raid? ”Michael Doyle, one of the Nicholas family attorneys, said in a statement.
Since the raid, prosecutors have reviewed thousands of cases handled by the narcotics unit.
More than 160 Goines-related drug convictions have been dismissed by prosecutors.
A July Narcotics Unit audit found that officers were often not thorough in their investigations and overpay informants for seizing tiny amounts of drugs.
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