Houston Cop Gerald Goines lies on search warrant affidavit, resulting in 2 dead & 400 drug cases under review

[Democide]

Probe of Old Drug Cases Raises Questions About 2004 George Floyd Arrest

19 June 2020

In many of Houston’s struggling neighborhoods, a black undercover narcotics officer worked for decades, making bust after bust. He often focused not on drug kingpins, but on those much farther down the supply chain, many of them residents of public housing projects where people still dried their laundry on clotheslines. The officer, Gerald M. Goines, made numerous arrests for “dime rocks” — a tiny amount of crack cocaine worth $10. Over a 30-year career, he helped send hundreds of people to jail, the majority of them African-Americans. But now, years later, many of his old cases are being looked at ...

Probe of Old Drug Cases Raises Questions About 2004 George Floyd Arrest (Published 2020)

Mr. Floyd was arrested in Houston over a $10 drug transaction. Now thousands of cases involving the officer who arrested him and his squad are under review.

www.nytimes.com

 

[Democide]

Audit criticizes Houston police unit tied to fatal drug raid

1 July 2020

An audit of a Houston Police Department narcotics unit that’s been under scrutiny following a deadly 2019 drug raid found that officers made hundreds of errors in cases, often weren’t thorough in their investigations, lacked supervision and overpaid informants for the seizure of minuscule amounts of drugs. A group of state lawmakers who had been fighting for months for the audit’s release criticized the report, calling it a “scam” for not detailing the systematic problems within the unit and the police department that ultimately led to the January 2019 drug raid in which Dennis Tuttle, 59, and his wife, Rhogena ...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/texas-da-files-new-charges-resulting-from-deadly-drug-raid/2020/07/01/764ca274-bbfb-11ea-97c1-6cf116ffe26c_story.html

 

[Democide]

Internal Investigation Shows The Houston PD's Narcotics Units Was An Unsupervised Mess

17 July 2020

The Houston PD decided to take a look at itself after a botched drug raid ended with two people killed by officers. The raid was predicated on pure bullshit. Officer Gerald Goines turned two Houston residents into dangerous drug traffickers by using a nonexistent confidential informant, drugs Goines had stashed in his squad car, and a narrative unsupported by any actual facts. Claims of heroin trafficking by a violent drug dealer were undercut by the raid itself, which turned up no heroin or the gun the (fake) informant claimed he saw. Officer Goines is now former officer Goines. He's facing ...

Internal Investigation Shows The Houston PD's Narcotics Units Was An Unsupervised Mess

The Houston PD decided to take a look at itself after a botched drug raid ended with two people killed by officers. The raid was predicated on pure bullshit. Officer Gerald Goines turned two Houston residents into dangerous drug traffickers by using a...

www.techdirt.com

 

[Democide]

Grand Jury Indictments Paint a Picture of Deadly Deceit in Houston Narcotics Division

3 August 2020

A Harris County, Texas, grand jury has confirmed the criminal charges against six former Houston narcotics officers that District Attorney Kim Ogg announced on July 1, while adding two more counts against one of the defendants. The 17 felony charges include falsification of search warrants, fraudulent reports of drug purchases, and phony overtime claims. The indictments, which were issued on Friday, reflect the shady practices and lax supervision that enabled veteran Houston police officer Gerald Goines to instigate a deadly 2019 raid based on a drug sale that never happened. All six defendants—three officers, two sergeants, and a lieutenant—worked for ...

Grand Jury Indictments Paint a Picture of Deadly Deceit in Houston Narcotics Division

The charges, which grew out of a lethal 2019 raid based on a fraudulent search warrant affidavit, suggest that cops routinely built their cases on lies.

reason.com

 

[Democide]

Woman who lied in 911 calls about Harding Street neighbors sentenced to 40 months in federal prison

8 June 2021

Patricia Ann Garcia’s voice came in, harsh and flat, over the phone. More than two years before, in the thrall of drug addiction and alcohol, she had called police and told them her neighbors were drug dealers. That her daughter — she had no daughter — was in a neighbor’s house, and police needed to rescue her. That they had guns. And that police would probably need to swarm the house unannounced, because the people inside might resist. When she’d made the call, she wasn’t in her right mind, she told U.S. Judge George C. Hanks. She’d made a bad ...

Woman who lied in 911 calls about Harding Street neighbors sentenced to 40 months in federal prison

A federal judge sentenced Patricia Ann Garcia to 40 months for lying in 911 calls about...

www.houstonchronicle.com

 

[Democide]

Nearly 400 get letters from Harris DA saying narcotics officers' involvement could change case outcome

21 June 2021

The letters to the accused all carry similar messages: A current or former Houston police officer may have been involved in their arrest. Contact a defense attorney if they wish to discuss options related to their case. Earlier this month, Harris County prosecutors sent such letters to nearly 400 defendants arrested by six current and former narcotics officers accused of misconduct after a deadly raid in January 2019. The letters raise anew a question that continues to plague prosecutors and defense attorneys: How many people were wrongly convicted on the testimony of Goines or his comrades, and, realistically, how many ...

Nearly 400 get letters from DA saying narcotics officers' involvement could change case outcome

Harris County prosecutors sent letters to nearly 400 defendants arrested by six current...

www.houstonchronicle.com

 

[Democide]

A Houston Man Framed on Drug Charges Is Suing the Lethally Corrupt Cop Who Sent Him to Prison

20 August 2021

Ten years ago, Otis Mallet was convicted of selling crack cocaine in Houston based on a transaction that prosecutors and state courts eventually concluded never happened. But in the meantime, Mallet was sentenced to eight years in prison, of which he served two before he was released on parole. This travesty might never have come to light but for the scrutiny that followed a deadly 2019 drug raid orchestrated by Gerald Goines, the same narcotics officer who framed Mallet. That operation, which killed a middle-aged couple, Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas, whom Goines portrayed as heroin dealers, was likewise based ...

A Houston Man Framed on Drug Charges Is Suing the Lethally Corrupt Cop Who Sent Him to Prison

Otis Mallet's ordeal, like the deaths of Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas, involved a fictional drug purchase.

reason.com

 

[Democide]

A Pending Pardon for George Floyd Shows How the Drug War Gives Cops a License To Lie

6 October 2021

Sixteen years before he died at the hands of Minneapolis police officers, George Floyd was arrested in Houston, his hometown, for delivery of a controlled substance. It was a routine case involving a tiny amount of crack, which the arresting officer said Floyd had given to a "second suspect" so that person could sell it to the cop, who was posing as a buyer. Floyd ultimately pleaded guilty and served 10 months in jail. Floyd's conviction was a sadly common illustration of the drug war's injustice and futility. No one would have given it a second look but for a ...

A Pending Pardon for George Floyd Shows How the Drug War Gives Cops a License To Lie

Floyd was arrested for selling crack by a crooked Houston narcotics cop who repeatedly lied to implicate people in drug crimes.

reason.com

 

[Democide]

A Houston Drug Cop's Lies Sent This Man to Prison for 25 Years
The case shows how lax supervisors, incurious prosecutors, deferential judges, credulous jurors, and inattentive defense attorneys abet police misconduct.

22 July 2022

Four years ago, Frederick Jeffery was sentenced to 25 years in prison for possessing five grams of methamphetamine—a bit more than the weight of a single sugar packet. That draconian punishment, which was enhanced based on prior convictions, was appalling enough by itself. But now it turns out that Jeffery was convicted based on lies, as he has always insisted. Harris County, Texas, Judge Stacy M. Allen yesterday recommended that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals reverse Jeffery's conviction, saying it resulted from "a pattern of deceit involving fictional drug buys, perjured search warrant affidavits, and false testimony to a ...

A Houston Drug Cop's Lies Sent This Man to Prison for 25 Years

The case shows how lax supervisors, incurious prosecutors, deferential judges, credulous jurors, and incompetent defense attorneys abet police misconduct.

reason.com