Floyd among those arrested by controversial vice officer

HOUSTON» 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 further 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 with new scrutiny.

Goines is at the center of one of the biggest police scandals in Houston’s history, after a botched drug raid he orchestrated led to the death of a local couple in their home in 2019. Prosecutors said Goines had lied about drug transactions happening at the house in order to obtain a no-knock warrant for the raid, and that as a result, thousands of cases that he and his narcotics squad handled were under review.

So far, more than 100 people who Goines helped arrest over an 11-year period are on track to have their cases dismissed and three others have either had their convictions overturned or judges have concluded that they were innocent.

One new name has emerged as a possible victim of a wrongful arrest by Goines — George Floyd.

Floyd, who died after a white officer held him under his knee in Minneapolis, igniting a protest movement against police brutality, grew up in Houston and was arrested by Goines in 2004 over a $10 drug transaction. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to jail.

The 2004 arrest is now being re-examined by Kim Ogg, the district attorney in Houston’s Harris County, as part of the review of the former officer’s now-questionable cases. The arrest was not the first time Floyd had run-ins with law enforcement in Houston. But it sent him to state jail for 10 months. He later moved to Minneapolis to try to turn his life around.

“His interactions with at least two policemen were quite negative — one likely led to a wrongful conviction, the other to his death in custody,” Ogg said. “It’s more than a coincidence. It’s just a terrible example of how unfortunately some policemen deal with minority men. I don’t think the color of the cop is really the problem. I think the problem is police culture.”

Prosecutors, public defenders, defense lawyers and some of those Goines helped wrongfully convict said the former officer left a devastating legacy, framing people for drug deals they never made and sending them to jail on charges that hung over them for years, ruining job prospects and personal relationships.

One of them was Steven Mallet, 62, who was arrested in 2008 and spent 10 months in the Harris County Jail. Goines claimed that while he was working undercover, Mallet and his brother Otis sold him $200 worth of crack cocaine out of a blue can in his brother’s truck. Last year, after their cases were reopened, judges found there was no evidence that the narcotics transaction happened and that the brothers were actually innocent.

The problems with Goines’ cases came to light after last year’s botched drug raid. The officer, who has since retired, faces both state and federal charges in connection with the raid, including felony murder and tampering with records.