Audit of HPD draws criticism
Lawmakers, attorneys for couple killed in raid say review falls short
Standing outside the small house where Houston police officers conducted a raid that killed two and grievously wounded their department’s reputation, Gene Wu clasped the audit he’d been asking about for months and labeled it a scam.
Wu and other state lawmakers on Thursday criticized the internal audit of the Narcotics Division, calling it a “whitewash” and vowing to propose legislation to prevent government agencies from blocking the release of internal audits or similar documents in the future.
Also at the news conference were lawyers representing relatives of Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas, the couple who lived at 7815 Harding St. and were killed in the raid. Gerald Goines, the officer who led the operation, was later accused of lying about the drug buy that led to the operation and is charged with felony murder and other crimes. His former partner, Steven Bryant, faces charges of tampering with a government record.
The raid could have happened only in an environment of “pervasive, long-standing custom and practice of illegal activity that was known and condoned at the highest level,” said Boyd Smith, one of the attorneys. “And this report doesn’t address that critical issue.”
But Mayor Sylvester Turner,
who agreed last week to release the audit to state lawmakers to review confidentially, said the review “took a very critical eye.”
“And it was an audit that HPD itself did. They didn’t wait for somebody to say, ‘Do it.’ They did it. No. 2, they’ve already made changes. No. 3, you’re always looking through your system to see what additional changes need to take place. It’s never one and done; it’s a constant review.”
Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo ordered the investigative audit after the Harding Street drug raid. After repeatedly refusing to make it public, he released the document in a tweet late Wednesday night after Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg announced additional charges against Goines, Bryant and four other former officers and supervisors.
Acevedo could not immediately be reached for comment.
The auditors — former Assistant Chief Pete Lopez, seven sergeants and one police officer — looked at the Narcotics Division’s street-level drug suppression squads. They found widespread sloppiness and lax supervision: unauthorized informant payments. Missing case review sheets. Incomplete offense reports. Hundreds of other administrative errors by undercover narcotics officers.
Most of the information authorities released previously centered on misconduct by Goines and Bryant, but auditors examined three years of casework of the two former Squad 15 officers, and probed casework of approximately 70 other undercover officers in squads 9, 10, 14 and 15. There are approximately 175 officers in the Narcotics Division.
Though they found policy violations and “numerous errors” related to confidential informant payments, they said they could not make conclusions about illegal activity without the ability to interview confidential informants or witnesses.
In February, Acevedo released — in a tweet — a list of reforms to the Narcotics Division but blocked requests to release the audit, saying he did not want to jeopardize the criminal cases against Goines or Bryant.
The operational review
The document shows auditors reviewed the division’s policies and found a half-dozen standard operating procedures “lacked sufficient supervisory oversight.”
They also found hundreds of “administrative” errors, including unauthorized informant payments; sloppy investigations; and cases without tactical plans or with missing documentation. They found dozens of cases that supervisors did not appear to have reviewed, and others where officers submitted evidence late or failed to fill out basic offense reports properly, as well as discrepancies in warrants, evidence and expenses.
The audit also found “overwhelmingly” the need to improve administrative procedures, specifically, supervisory review of case files and case tracking.
Patrick O’Burke, a former deputy commander at the Texas Department of Public Safety who oversaw drug law enforcement, said the audit is a “significant effort” but fails to identify the reasons for the sloppiness it uncovered.
“This report does not provide key findings that show how such problems will be limited or reduced in the future,” said O’Burke, tasked with overhauling Texas’ drug task forces after a racist drug arrest scandal in the 1990s in Tulia.
The report’s authors wrote that while reviewing Goines and Bryant’s
casework from 2016 to 2019, they found 404 errors and a “high level of administrative errors and overall lack of attention to detail.”
Auditors found that in the 84 case files they reviewed, Goines submitted evidence late almost half the time and made unauthorized informant payments 18 times.
Numerous times, Goines paid confidential informants without getting necessary approvals from supervisors, the document shows.
Auditors then looked at the other members of Squad 14 and Squad 15, the two general enforcement squads covering south Houston. They found incomplete offense reports, discrepancies in evidence, expenses and warrants, and sloppily conducted investigations.
Auditors found many similar errors with the casework of the officers who worked in the two squads handling drug enforcement on the north side of the city, squads 9 and 10. The document shows that auditors reviewed 252 cases and found more than 400 errors.
‘Out of control’
Houston NAACP President James Douglas said: “I wouldn’t have confidence in anything that came from this division,” he said. “This calls into question other divisions. If it’s this lax in narcotics, what happens in other divisions in the police department?”
One expert on police procedure said the apparent failure to enforce basic policies could lead to an atmosphere where officers didn’t think they had to follow the rules.
“The number and variety of errors looks like an operation completely out of control,” said Sam Walker, a criminologist at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. “One that’s continued for some time.”
The audit does not comment specifically about the supervisors who oversaw Goines and Bryant, including those who were charged Wednesday.
In the months after the raid, Goines retired from HPD. Bryant also retired, along with Goines’ other former partner, Hodgie Armstrong. The three supervisors charged — Sgt. Clemente Reyna, Sgt. Tommy Wood and Lt. Robert Gonzales — also retired. Former Narcotics Commander Paul Follis was transferred to a different post, the Hobby Airport Division.
Prosecutors later accused Goines of having a sexual relationship with one of his informants and believe more than 150 convictions won on his casework are suspect. Three defendants have seen their cases overturned.
The reforms Acevedo announced in his tweet earlier this year included requirements that lieutenants be present when officers serve warrants and that more supervisors review tactical plans; barred the use of no-knock warrants without his express permission or that of his “designee”; banned officers from obtaining search warrants from municipal court judges; and created a tactical team to execute high-risk warrants.
He also ordered narcotics officers to wear body cameras while performing drug raids, created electronic case management and mandated officers document all interactions with confidential informants. Finally, he added requirements to perform yearly background checks on confidential informants and random faceto-face reviews of officers’ informants.
‘Tiny peek’ into issues
At the news conference Thursday, the state representatives said they were “disappointed” in the department’s long fight against disclosing the audit.
“I’m disappointed it took so long to coax even this tiny bit of transparency (from HPD),” said state Rep. Jon Rosenthal, D-Houston. “What we see in this internal audit — performed by the department, investigating itself — is that we just get a tiny peek into the systemic issues that this department has. It really points to the need for external oversight.”
State Rep. Paul Bettencourt, RHouston, posted a video Wednesday shortly before the audit was released saying he’d seen the audit and that it should be made public.
Attorneys for the relatives of the slain couple contended the audit didn’t probe deeply enough into the undercover division.
“As bad as the audit is, it still avoids addressing the cover-up of the origin of and the top-brass response to the raid,” said Mike Doyle, attorney for Nicholas’ relatives. “The big questions are ‘why did this happen?’ and ‘why is the city still fighting our access to the evidence?’ ”
State Rep. Christina Morales said she hoped HPD’s decision to release the audit was an important step in bridging trust with the public it serves.
“Without continued transparency previously promised, it will be difficult for the HPD to rebuild faith in our city,” she warned.