A second Houston police officer has been charged with murder and is among the other officers who were indicted as part of an ongoing investigation at a Houston Police Department narcotics unit after a deadly drug raid 2019, prosecutors announced on Monday. In all, a dozen police officers linked to the narcotics unit were indicted after their work was investigated following the January 2019 anti-drug operation in which Dennis Tuttle, 59, and his wife, Rhogena Nicholas, 58, were killed.
“The consequences of corruption are two innocent ordinary people were killed in their homes, four policemen were shot, one of them paralyzed and now they will all face Harris County jurors who will decide their fate,” said Harris County prosecutor Kim Ogg.
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Officer Felipe Gallegos was charged with murder in Tuttle’s death. If convicted, he could face life imprisonment, Ogg said.
Gallegos’ lawyer Rusty Hardin declined to comment on the case on Monday.
Five other police officers were indicted on Monday for their roles in an alleged scheme to steal overtime as part of their work with the drug squad.
Three of the policemen – Oscar Pardo, Cedell Lovings and Nadeem Ashraf – face criminal charges of first degree of involvement in organized criminal activity related to the theft of a public official and tampering with government registration. They can face life imprisonment if convicted.
Two other police officers – Frank Medina and Griff Maxwell – face second-degree crimes on the same charges and could face up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo said a lead investigator lied in a statement justifying the anti-drug operation. On Monday acevedo released a statement after the new charges were announced, saying the police officer charged with murder on Monday “had no involvement in obtaining the warrant and responded appropriately to the deadly threat” posed during the operation.
Ogg said the grand jurors on Monday also indicted three retired officers who had been indicted last year on different charges in connection with the case. Two of these officers – Clemente Reyna and Thomas Wood – were indicted for first-degree crimes of involvement in organized criminal activity related to theft of a public servant and tampering with government registration. The third retired officer – Hodgie Armstrong – was indicted for second degree crimes 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 counts of intentional manslaughter in state court against Goines. Another former officer, Lieutenant Robert Gonzales, was indicted last year.
Prosecutors allege that their investigation found that the indicted police officers were part of a unit that falsified documentation on drug payments to confidential informants, routinely used false information to obtain search warrants and lied in police reports.
Prosecutors accused Goines of lying to obtain the search warrant at Tuttle and Nicholas’s home. Goines claimed that a confidential informant bought heroin at home. But the informant told investigators that no such purchase has ever taken place, officials said. The police found small amounts of marijuana and cocaine in the house, but no heroin.
When police officers entered the house using a “raid ban” warrant, which did not require them to announce themselves before entering, they were met with gunfire. Friends of Tuttle and Nicholas say they are not criminals and suggest that the couple may have thought they were being attacked by intruders.
Five officers, including goines, were injured in the operation.
In a statement on Monday, Houston police chief Art Acevedo blamed Goines and Bryant for the search warrant and said other officers, including Gallegos, “responded appropriately to the deadly threat presented to them during the service ( of the warrant) “.
A Houston Police Officers spokesman did not immediately return an email asking for comment on Monday. The union had already called the charges against Ogg’s former political maneuver officers.
Lawyers for Tuttle and Nicholas’s relatives conducted their own investigations into the operation and fought against the city and the police department in court over requests for documents and depositions from agency officials.
“These latest accusations confirm some of the conclusions of the independent investigation of the families and, again, raise two questions: how high is the corruption (of the drug squad) and why the city and the (Houston police) have fought so hard, still, to hide the basic facts about what happened before, during and after the murderous attack? “Michael Doyle, one of the lawyers for the Nicholas family, said in a statement.
Since the operation, prosecutors have examined thousands of cases handled by the narcotics unit.
More than 160 convictions for drug offenses linked to Goines were dismissed by prosecutors.
An audit released in July at the narcotics unit found that police officers were often not thorough in their investigations and paid extra for seizing tiny amounts of drugs.