Deadly Houston drug raid probed by FBI; prosecutor to review 1,400 cases of key officer

Deadly Houston drug raid probed by FBI; prosecutor to review 1,400 cases of key officer
"I'm very confident we're going to have criminal charges on one or more of the officers," the police chief has said of the raid that killed two people and wounded several officers.

The Houston-area prosecutor's office said it is reviewing more than 1,400 cases spanning the career of a city narcotics officer at the center of questions swirling around a deadly drug raid last month.

The FBI also said it has opened an independent civil rights investigation into Jan. 28 raid that left a man and a woman who lived at the home dead and several police officers shot and injured. The agency's Houston office said the investigation is "into allegations that a search warrant obtained by Houston police officers was based on false, fabricated information."

Houston officials discovered in the aftermath of the raid that an affidavit for the warrant appears to have included "some material untruths or lies," the city's police chief said last week.

Police documents say the warrant for the Harding Street home was justified by claims that a confidential informant bought heroin there and saw a weapon, and investigators trying to find that informant were provided two names by narcotics Officer Gerald Goines, who was wounded in the raid.

But both informants denied working on that case or buying drugs at that address, and all the informants on a list of those who had worked for Goines denied making a buy for Goines from that residence, and ever buying drugs from the two people killed in the raid, Dennis Tuttle, 59, and Rhogena Nicholas, 58.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/crime-courts/deadly-houston-drug-raid-probed-fbi-prosecutor-review-1-400-n973756