Chief opens probe of HPD overtime theft
The day after a Harris County grand jury indicted several Houston police officers for lying to pad their overtime pay, Chief Art Acevedo informed officers he was opening an administrative investigation into the matter.
“I want to reiterate the importance of paying attention to details and being accurate on all government records,” Acevedo wrote in a Tuesday night email to his officers obtained by the Chronicle.
He noted that a number of the indictments related to overtime issues and arose from the Harris County district attorney’s investigation.
“We will be initiating a separate administrative investigation into this matter and will take the appropriate action upon the conclusion of our review,” the email said.
On Monday, District Attorney Kim Ogg announced that grand jurors had handed down indictments against six officers: a murder charge against veteran officer Felipe Gallegos in connection with the of killing Dennis Tuttle during the Harding Street drug raid in January 2019, and first- and second-degree felonies against five officers for lying and colluding about overtime hours to inflate their pay.
The department first came under scrutiny after the January 2019 raid of Tuttle’s house on Harding Street, when Squad 15 narcotics officers, using a no-knock warrant, burst into the house looking for drugs. Gunfire erupted, ending with the deaths of Tuttle and his wife, Rhogena Nicholas, and four officers shot. After the raid, police investigators announced that officer Gerald Goines was under investigation for lying about buying drugs from the home.
The scandal resulted in multiple investigations, and state and federal charges against Goines, and his partner, Steven Bryant. Goines now faces felony murder charges in state court, and civil rights violations and tampering charges in federal court. Bryant faces tampering charges in state and federal court.
More than a year after the raid, Ogg charged Goines, Bryant, several supervisors, and one of Goines’ old partners with other crimes, including tampering with government records, aggregate overtime theft and misapplication of fiduciary responsibility.
At the time, Ogg said evidence showed “graft and greed at every step in the process,” with the potential to “literally rot an institution from the inside out.”
Said DA spokesman Dane Schiller: “We follow evidence, apply the law and prosecute crimes, but we have no hand in any police agency’s administrative reviews.”
Latest concerns
The list of officers accused with “paperwork” crimes includes Goines, Bryant, former Lt. Robert Gonzales, former sergeants Clemente Reyna and Thomas Wood, former officers Griff Maxwell, Cedell Lovings and Hodgie Armstrong, and officers Frank Medina, Nadeem Ashraf, and Oscar Pardo.
The indictments announced Monday are the latest indications of concerns about sloppiness or lack of oversight of HPD officers that go back many years.
In 2012, four officers were suspended for listing one another as witnesses on traffic tickets to help themselves accrue more overtime pay for testifying in court. Then-Chief Charles A. McClelland suspended the officers for 20 days to 45 days off without pay.
Discipline records obtained by the Chronicle show numerous instances when officers were disciplined for overtime or payroll irregularities: In February 2018, an officer in major offenders was suspended for seven days for requesting overtime pay for shifts he never worked. In April of that year, an auto theft lieutenant received a five-day suspension for failing to properly supervise a sergeant who failed to report for duty 26 times. A month later, Acevedo handed down a 40-day suspension to an officer who left work early 40 times in 2017, and in July, the chief fired another officer who routinely didn’t show up for work. And then in December 2018, a gang officer received a 20-day suspension for routinely failing to work full days.
A Chronicle investigation in March 2020 showed sloppiness in several of the department’s undercover divisions’ controls of confidential informant funds.
July audit
An audit of the narcotics division raised similar concerns in July. The audit — ordered up after the Harding Street raid — found that officers in street level narcotics squads made unauthorized informant payments, failed to complete offense reports, and made hundreds of other errors.
The audit also found “overwhelmingly” the need to improve administrative procedures, specifically, supervisory review of case files and case tracking.
In response to questions from the Chronicle, Acevedo explained that Ogg’s past charges related to former employees while the newer charges pertain to current employees.
“The grand jury indicted active employees on OT, which we are investigating,”
he said in a text message. “We were aware DA was criminally investigating beyond (officer involved shooting) related issues, and now that the investigation is complete we are initiating our internal investigation. We are working with DA’s team to obtain information on the facts and evidence.”
Timing questioned
Previously, Acevedo has credited his officers’ investigation for leading to charges against Goines and Bryant.
But police critics and civil rights activists questioned the timing of Acevedo’s latest probe.
“This is not the first time this issue has come to light with HPD doing strange things, and overstating their working hours to create additional pay,” said Houston NAACP President James Douglas, pointing to sloppy paperwork raised by the narcotics audit.
“I would have thought the chief would have moved forward to deal with it (in July) but he did not,” Douglas said.
Representatives of rankand-file officers, however, have criticized Ogg’s prosecution, saying it is a politically motivated effort. On Tuesday, Houston Police Officers’ Union President Douglas Griffith described the allegations as “irregularities in overtime slips,” which could easily be explained, and said Ogg had “overreached.”
“It is nothing more than TV justice at its best to go out and charge our officers,” he said. “And I see them coming back to work one day, after all these cases are dismissed, and being productive members of our organization.”