Independent Forensic Investigation Undermines Houston Cops' Narrative About Fatal Drug Raid
from the cops-lie dept
Everything about the botched no-knock raid by the Houston Police Department just keeps getting worse. Here's how everything has gone down so far:
- The HPD said the raid was predicated on a tip that drugs were being sold in the house. In actuality, the "tip" was one of the now-dead resident's mother calling the police to tell them her daughter was using drugs.
- A drug buy was set up using an informant. The informant claimed he had purchased heroin from the house, seen plenty of heroin packaged for sale, and several guns. No heroin was found during the raid and the heroin sent out for testing came from the console of an officer's vehicle.
- The officers claimed one of the residents, 59-year-old Dennis Tuttle, opened fire on them, necessitating the use of force that left Tuttle and his wife of 20 years dead. The gun supposedly fired at officers was not included in the search warrant inventory.
- The officers involved in the raid are now under investigation by the FBI and the DA's office. This has led to the dismissal of criminal cases the two officers were involved in.
Everything about the raid points to a drug unit that loves to raid houses but no so much the due diligence that goes with it. This, shall we say… "zealous" enforcement of the law ended with the deaths of two drug users -- not dealers -- at the hands of cops who have proven to be entirely unreliable when it comes to the "investigation" part of drug investigations.
Another investigation has been opened. An independent forensic review -- headed by a former NCIS supervisor -- of the crime scene has been conducted and the results are jaw-dropping. Not only do they indicate the officers' narrative of the raid is highly-dubious, it shows the Houston PD's forensic team is possibly no better at its job than the officers behind the botched raid.
Hired by the relatives of Rhogena Nicholas and Dennis Tuttle, the new forensics team found no signs the pair fired shots at police — and plenty of signs that previous investigators overlooked dozens of pieces of potential evidence in what one expert called a “sloppy” investigation.
“It doesn’t appear that they took the basic steps to confirm and collect the physical evidence to know whether police were telling the truth,” said attorney Mike Doyle, who is representing the Nicholas family. “That’s the whole point of forensic scene documentation. That’s the basic check on people just making stuff up.”
The police claimed they started firing when the couple's dog charged at them as they came through the door. But the investigation shows the dog was killed in the dining room, more than 15 feet from the front door. The investigators also couldn't find anything confirming the officers' claims that Tuttle started firing at them as they came through the door. It also appears some of the officers were firing into the house before entering it -- another contradiction of the official narrative.
Some of the bullet holes outside the house appeared at least a foot from the door, a fact that Doyle flagged as troubling.
“You can’t see into the house from there,” he said, “you’re firing into the house through a wall.”
It's not just evidence that appears to contradict the official story. The independent investigators also came across a ton of evidence that was never gathered by Houston PD investigators. Left behind were items tagged as evidence, the drugs the HPD drug unit was so hot and bothered about, and a bunch of bullets and casings that could help reconstruct what actually happened inside the house during the raid.
As Radley Balko points out, this really doesn't look good for the Houston PD Forensics unit. It suggests two things -- neither of them positive.
The most damning explanation is that the investigators were covering for the cops. A slightly less damning, but still pretty bad, explanation is that the investigators simply took the cops’ word about what happened and thus saw no need to carefully inspect the crime scene. The least damning explanation is that the cops got no special treatment at all. But that would mean that this is the way crime-scene investigators handle all homicide investigations. You know you’ve been roped into a scandal when the most flattering explanation for your behavior is that you aren’t corrupt, you’re merely incompetent.
This is bad news for the Houston PD and everyone in their jurisdiction. This case has had zero positive developments since it first started making national headlines. A moratorium on no-knock raids might reduce the number of people killed by police officers, but it isn't going to fix the underlying issues that lead to the deadly raid -- and its horrendous aftermath.
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Filed Under: dennis tuttle, drug raid, forensics, houston, houston police, rhogenia nicholas
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So basically the independant investigation could find no evidence that a bunch of 'people' did not get together and decided to murder a couple (who seem to have been drug users) and their dog
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heroin from an officers car? so shocking.
that "gram of coke" they supposedly found sounds EXACTLY like something such an officer might keep on hand to "find" on a particularly unruly non-white subject...
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But that nice union man talked about how dangerous their jobs are and praised them.
Perhaps the CSI's didn't bother because even with video of an officer emptying a clip into a fleeing unarmed subject rarely will the DA have the will to bring charges & the courts always seem to find a way to award them QI.
Cops invented a narrative.
Cops executed citizens.
Cops fabricated evidence.
Cops fabricated reports.
CSI apparently was reading Hustler behind the 7-11.
But the 'investigation' is ongoing, being lead by 3 blind mice.
Oh goody some people got their cases dismissed, how long were these fine upstanding officers on the job, how many investigations did they touch, how much heroin vanished into his cup holder?
Perhaps, instead of playing its a few bad apples & worrying about union bosses giving you a bad soundbite, it is time to shatter contracts that protect bad actors.
This bullshit of he was fired, but arbitration decided he should be reinstated with back pay, because he only was just over the legal limit when he ran the red light, caused an accident that left a citizen paralyzed.
Perhaps its time to demand that 'officers' fired for misconduct get on a list so they can't just roll into another town to keep terrorizing people.
Perhaps it is time to stop breathlessly covering union bosses screaming about a war on cops while the investigation of a drug dealing cop who murdered citizens is being mishandled internally. The fact the families have to pay for competent investigation tends to suggest that this department no longer functions & needs serious reform.
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Re:
The independent investigation reported facts, not conclusions. The facts didn't preclude that a bunch of police officers got together and decided to murder a couple of citizens and their dog with no actual reason.
The conclusions come from others, and while the officers involved can make their statements. But when the evidence fails to support their stated theories, then the conclusions necessarily become other than what their statements were.
There, FTFY.
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By any chance, would you have any stories about home-invading, trigger-happy, lying homicidal cops like these being shot and killed en masse?
I'm craving a feel-good story to read, you see.
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Re: Sadly...
... Oh goody some still living people got their cases dismissed, ...
FTFY. And that's the best we can come up with in this case.
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Re: Re:
Yeah that definetely is better written.
However I was kind of aiming for 'slightly memorable' which is easier if it's shorter. (not to say that I got what I was aiming for... just what my aims were :p )
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Re:
Try not to sink to their level, one group of murderous thugs and/or people cheering them on is bad enough, no need to add to the count.
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'We're not corrupt, just grossly incompetent!'
You know you’ve been roped into a scandal when the most flattering explanation for your behavior is that you aren’t corrupt, you’re merely incompetent.
Yeah, when 'so incapable of doing their job they should be fired on the spot and all investigations they were involved in tossed as tainted' is the best case scenario you know things have gone south(to put it mildly).
This case has had zero positive developments since it first started making national headlines.
Not entirely true I'd say. Before this whole thing blew up in their face there wasn't likely any real push to fix the corrupt/incomptent department. Now that there's national attention though it will be much more difficult(though sadly not impossible) for them to just brush everything under the rug and continue on, same as before.
If nothing else the gross incompetence/corruption on display should be a huge boon to any past/present/future defendants as they rightly point out that there's very strong reason to question any 'facts' presented by the department in court.
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Re: 'We're not corrupt, just grossly incompetent!'
Sorry, you left out the middle ground. Plain old everyday apathy. To my mind, this is as bad or worse than the others. The others take a proactive stance. Apathy on the other hand just takes not caring. Which is worse? Or is there no difference?
If one's intent is to uphold the law, then they are all equally bad, even if not considered intentional. All should be actionable by competent parts of the law enforcement community (which includes prosecutors and courts), but given the systems propensity to give qualified immunity and inevitable discovery without any actual evidence to support such positions, I doubt they will.
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Re: Re:
Fair enough. What about stories about killer cops being held up and their weapons confiscated? Or their surplus military vehicles being stolen and dismantled?
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Re: Re: Re:
THB I'd rather read about humans, regardless of occupation, getting a fair trial, and reasonable sentancing (or lack there of) base on a thing called 'evidence'.
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Re:
They can start by getting rid of their chief of police who seems to get involved in this crap everywhere he goes. Ask Austin, they'll give an earful on Acevedo and his hired minions.
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RE: Apathy, ignorance?
I don't know and I don't care.
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fucking tim cushing
descibes the victims as drug users.
first, tim cushing the pedophile, cheap shots at dead people should be beneath you, but it appears you like 12 yr old boys beneath you even more.
anywho, the HPD has said tim cushing's pedophilia is not their immediate concern.
dead drug users, said tim cushing the pedophile, is more relevant
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It has to Stop
The war on drugs has KILLED way to many innocents.
It has created an army of zero tolerance military equipped anti citizen police departments who imagine the heavily armed cartel is laying in wait behind every suburban front door.
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Re: Re: Re:
If the extent of harm is egg on the faces of the deserving rather than assault and/or death then I'd say mocking laughter would be fitting and appropriate.
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As the saying goes, 'You had ONE job'
I'd lump apathy into the category of incompetent, as if you can't be bothered to do your job then clearly you're not going to do it right(if at all). If you're hired to do X and don't, whether that's because you can't or can't be bothered to is kinda splitting hairs, as either way you most certainly do not deserve a job that requires doing X.
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Oh the hypocrisy...
Has(or pretends to have) a redwood up their ass about two people being called drug users, and meanwhile flings about accusations much worse with abandon.
Enjoy the funny and report flags you sad, funny person.
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You forgot to add that the informant that claimed to have purchased heroin didn't exist.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/16/us/houston-police-gerald-goines.html
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Re:
Damnit. Keep forgetting to add my name.
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Re:
Exactly. And we know how important the 'presumption of innocence' is in our culture and since no positive evidence exists that these people conspired to murder this couple we are forced to conclude that they are completely innocent and it would be a miscarriage of justice to bring charges against them at this time.
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In actuality, the "tip" was one of the now-dead resident's mother calling the police to tell them her daughter was using drugs.
STASI is laughing in its grave.
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Re: It has to Stop
The war on drugs has KILLED way to many innocents.
It was designed to imprison minorities so that the one-percent can discriminate on the basis of criminal record.
It has created an army of zero tolerance military equipped anti citizen police departments who imagine the heavily armed cartel is laying in wait behind every suburban front door.
Which is why smart people live in big cities.
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Yeah, when 'so incapable of doing their job they should be fired on the spot and all investigations they were involved in tossed as tainted' is the best case scenario you know things have gone south(to put it mildly).
"I'd fire you, but that would call attention to the fact that I HIRED you."
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Why work for nothing?
Of course they did. If the investigators had carefully inspected the crime scene, they might have been forced to conclude that the cops lied about the events. The investigators would have become pariahs, at best shunned by the cops, at worst actually threatened. Who wants that?
So they carefully didn't see anything at all and, since seeing nothing at all requires no physical evidence, why go to all the work of collecting it?
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Re: Re: 'We're not corrupt, just grossly incompetent!'
Apathy to the level of not doing your job IS incompetence. If apathy affected the forensic team's judgment this badly, incompetence is the word I would use.
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Hey, Mike: Maybe consider a fundraiser to install a Sad But True button.
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That is a secondary reason. The primary reason is to get cheap labor, since slavery is still legal if it is a punishment for a convicted felon.
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Don't EVER call the cops!
<i>In actuality, the "tip" was one of the now-dead resident's mother calling the police to tell them her daughter was using drugs.</i>
Where has this woman been for the last 20 years? She signed her daughter's death warrant.
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Re: 'We're not corrupt, just grossly incompetent!'
How about when you are incompetent at being corrupt? I mean, that's the current Austrian defense: the vice chancellor is complaining that the offers for influencing elections by dismantling media and offers of black money in return for diverting government business out of the country were a ruse he fell for. So it would have been fine had it been real?
That's the kind of logic you are dealing with.
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Re: Re:
Harsh as it sounds they deserve exactly that and more. There are two kinds of people - those who know that is wrong and those who only realize when they or somebody they care about are affected the same way.
The latter say victims of police brutality "shouldn't have run but object strenuously to violence when literal nazis get punched in the face for advocating genocide. So clearly the best way to get them to renounce violence and reduce it overall is to use it on them - and they deserve it richly.
No knock raids fucked up so badly that invading police got shot before identifying themselves and ruled self defense are rare but happen and provide the much needed example of #2 as now they care about innocent people getting hurt.
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Can't help comparing this case to the Mueller investigation
If the justice department was on the brink of charging the President of the United States of America with obstruction of justice, then the facts presented in this article are more than enough evidence to lock the shooters up for a very long time. The forensic scientists, too. For obstruction.
And to squeeze every one of their colleagues, superiors, friends and family just like Messrs. Manafort, Cohen & Co. until they provide enough evidence to sue and convict the cops for murder.
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WOW, is this a TV special?
This really sounds like a TV, movie of the week special..
Much of this sounds directly Out of a series of old Bad cop movies, rolled up into one.
Then they call in an Ex NCIX to investigate.. Really sounds like the TV series review..
Love the idea that the Cops were shooting the outside of the house thru the walls. Umm, dont police have Ammo thats NOT supposed to OVER penetrate, so you dont kill the kid or go thru the WALL on the other side?? I would investigate THAT..
I have not seen anything on how many Officers were at the scene. only 4? More on a drug bust??
Dont we give Cops Good medical and very good wages compared to the Average person??
Anyone know the trick of Quitting, and requiring that the Case be closed and sealed, and the cops go some place else...
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Re:
You mean find on a non-blue “suspect.”
There’s racism in the police alright, but it’s the same reason that Orwell had the pigs at the top in Animal Farm.
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AKA: All you had to do, CJ
is follow the damn train.
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Re: Re: 'We're not corrupt, just grossly incompetent!'
That's how the Trumps dodged collusion. The determination was that they were literally so stupid that their working so closely with Russia to undermine the US must not have been intentional.
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police are corrupt
why is this not being investigated by the feds alone(?) once it was discovered that they were deprived of LIFE, liberty, and unable to pursue happiness ....
as for the MURDER
from the houston chronicle: "Police union representatives caution that Goines and Bryant are innocent until proven guilty. So were Tuttle and Nicholas. But they were killed before they got a chance to prove it."
the union speaks for all 5200 Houston police .. therefore they are ALL complicit. (if this argument is not true, then I want to see immediate cessation of all this white supremacy/guilt and reprations naratives, etc)
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Re: WOW, is this a TV special?
Hollywood hasnt made a movie critical of policing since Serpico.
By then, Israeli mobsters like Haym Saban, and Harvey Weinstein had also completely turned the propaganda stream into cop adulating cineporn, and Power Rangers, lol.
Then there was John Walsh, Americas cop porn king, and Americas Most Wanted running point for the coming total surveillance police state.
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Re: Don't EVER call the cops!
Mother knows best!
Women who cry wolf and rapewhistles get the police state they deserve.
I hope that old cop calling shitbag enjoys her lack of visits in her nursing home years.
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Re: so...gang stalking is....
real or not real, AC?
But the Stasi and its snitch society preshadowed our current call a cop model of policing, with these exact results.
And, some 20% of blogs about organized gang stalking mention the Stasi too.
Yup, Marcus Wolfe, and all of those, "others" whoever “they” are are surely rolling around in Sheol in smoky pigsking lined coffins.
And I like that idea a lot.
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Re: Re:
Please tell me more?
Are you suggesting that these stupid fat pigs
have minions?
Please do tell!
What do their minions do? Who are their minions? Can you prove it?
Are they like, a gang or something?
Do they threaten to target and stalk and harass critics, like that douchie Crisis PR piggy from the Houston police union did just after this targeted homicide?
Or, are you just a paranoid, delusional moron, worried that community policing, aka police gang stalking might affect you, personally, if you post with your real name?
Cops are the good peeple, an donthchu forget it!
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Re: WOW, is this a TV special?
Hollywood hasnt made a movie critical of policing since Serpico.
By then, Israeli mobsters like Haym Saban, and Harvey Weinstein had also completely turned the propaganda stream into cop adulating cineporn, and Power Rangers, lol.
Then there was John Walsh, Americas cop porn king, and Americas Most Wanted running point for the coming total surveillance police state.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Don't EVER call the cops!
Mother knows best!
Women who cry wolf and rapewhistles get the police state they deserve.
I hope that old cop calling shitbag enjoys her lack of visits in her nursing home years.
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Re: fucking tim cushing
I vote you up as the most random deranged comment I have ever seen on TD.
Now please pull your dick out of that dead deers ass, before we call the ASPCA.
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Brazil
Hang on a moment: they shot Tuttle!
Can it be that this is forgotten?
In Terry Gilliam's dystopian comedy "Brazil" the plot hinges around the arrest, torture and death of the innocent Archibald Buttle instead of Archibald Tuttle, the infamous renegade air conditioning specialist.
In "1984" the thing that makes the police terrifying is their efficiency: they can search Winston's flat without leaving a trace. In "Brazil" the thing that makes the police terrifying is their incompetence: they torture the wrong man to death due to a typo.
We are now living in Brazil.
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Re:
real or not real, AC?
But the Stasi and its snitch society preshadowed our current call a cop model of policing, with these exact results.
And, some 20% of blogs about organized gang stalking mention the Stasi too.
Yup, Marcus Wolfe, and all of those, "others" whoever “they” are are surely rolling around in Sheol in smoky pigsking lined coffins.
And I like that idea a lot.
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Re: Re: WOW, is this a TV special?
And thats Barely all thats happening..
Its like forensics being able to do anything, according to the FBI FILES...
But in real life if you ask the right questions...its not even 1/2 worthy of being used most times..
Love the idea that cartoons in the USA are Until RECENTLY, all baout no one dying, EVER.. even now, anima is MORE real then most Cartoons in the USA..
Who saw the old Road runner cartoons BEFORE they edited them, to never show the Coyote, falling..
Lord help us all, we are teaching kids that the Good always wins, no one ever dies or gets hurt, we are creating BABIES of our children, never have a REALITY...
I would rather teach them reality and how to become an ADULT.. Spend time on a working farm, and watch your Pet Pig become dinner..
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Re:
There you go, asserting facts in evidence again, Stephen.
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Re: Brazil
Actually, no, it's worse. The film "Idiocracy" is a documentary, not fiction.
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Re: Re:
Please tell me more?
Are you suggesting that these stupid fat pigs
have minions?
Please do tell!
What do their minions do? Who are their minions? Can you prove it?
Are they like, a gang or something?
Do they threaten to target and stalk and harass critics, like that douchie Crisis PR piggy from the Houston police union did just after this targeted homicide?
Or, are you just a paranoid, delusional moron, worried that community policing, aka police gang stalking might affect you, personally, if you post with your real name?
Cops are the good peeple, an donthchu forget it!
[ link to this | view in thread ]