HPD raid begets needless violence
On Jan. 28, a Houston narcotics team conducted a no-knock raid on the home of Dennis Tuttle, 59, and Rhogena Nicholas, 58. The police claimed to have received an anonymous tip that the two were selling drugs. They also claimed that they sent an informant to the house to attempt a controlled buy and that informant returned with heroin.
According to the police account, as they broke down the door, a dog charged them, and they shot it. They say Tuttle then charged at them with a handgun, wounding multiple officers. After the police opened fire, Tuttle retreated to a backroom. The police said Nicholas then charged a wounded officer and attempted to grab his shotgun. They opened fire again, killing her. They said Tuttle then re-emerged, firing his gun, at which point they killed him, too. In the end, the story went that five cops put their lives on the line to get a heroindealing couple off the street.
Since then, the official story has started to unravel. It’s increasingly looking as though something went horribly wrong on Harding Street, and that Tuttle and Nicholas were not hardened drug dealers, but at most recreational drug dealers who were invaded, shot and killed in their own home.
By last week, activists began to speak out, noting inconsistencies in the official narrative and questioning why the police needed to use such violent tactics in the first place. Some even began to question whether the police were telling the truth. This sparked a backlash from law enforcement. Chief Art Acevedo dismissed what he called “crazy conspiracy theories,” adding, “I guarantee you we got the right house.” Police union President Joe Gamaldi blamed the shooting on “anti-police rhetoric,” then issued what sounded an awful lot like a threat: “If you’re the ones that are out there spreading the rhetoric that police officers are the enemy, just know we’ve all got your number now, we’re going to be keeping track of all of y’all, and we’re going to make sure that we hold you accountable every time you stir the pot on our police officers.” To his credit, Acevedo criticized Gamaldi’s remarks.
But Gamaldi may soon need to spend more time defending his dues-paying members than tracking and threatening police critics. The Houston Chronicle reported that one officer’s suspension comes “amid a probe into questions over whether the sworn affidavit used to justify the no-knock warrant may have contained false information.” Acevedo told the paper, “I know that in addition to the officer-involved shooting itself, many have questions regarding the circumstances surrounding the search warrant. All of these questions are part of our ongoing criminal and administrative investigations.” Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg says she’s also looking into the matter.
Drug cops often face a lot of pressure to raid houses, seize illicit drugs and rack up arrests.
I’ve been writing about these tactics for more than 15 years now. And though there has been some movement on the margins — groups such as the National Tactical Officers Association now recommend that, when it comes to serving drug warrants, police attempt to apprehend suspects outside their homes instead of a “dynamic entry” — the raids haven’t stopped, and the pile of dead bodies keeps growing.
The arguments against these raids are self-evident. They create violence and confrontation where there was none. They sow confusion and chaos and thus have a thin margin for error. By design, they inflict punishment on people who have not been charged with a crime, much less convicted of one. They inflict punishment on any innocent people who might be inside. They subject everyone — cops and suspects — to unnecessary risk. Combine this with a drug war that by necessity operates on dirty information from shady informants and anonymous tips, and you have a recipe for needless death and destruction. And there’s little evidence that these tactics make the community any safer.
Police officials like to have it both ways. They want to use tactics designed to confuse and disorient people — to take people by surprise. But when someone in the midst of that chaos mistakes police for armed intruders and tries to defend himself, officials say he should have known the armed intruders were law enforcement. For Reason magazine, Jacob Sullum wrote that there was a good reason Tuttle and Nicholas may have believed otherwise: There has been a rash of recent incidents in Houston in which armed criminals have posed as police.
On top of all this, there’s a huge double standard at play. Police who mistakenly shoot unarmed or innocent people in these raids are inevitably forgiven by police chiefs, prosecutors and judges, owing to the volatility of the circumstances. But the police created those circumstances. And yet the targets of these raids — the people the tactics are designed to confuse — are rarely afforded that same leniency. If you shoot at the police as they raid your home, you’re almost certainly looking at criminal charges that will put you in prison for a long time — provided you live through the raid itself.