Thread by @stjbs

INCOMING: I’ve spent the year covering the Houston Police Narcotics’ Division. In January, HPD narcs burst into a home on Harding Street looking for heroin. The “no-knock” raid devolved into a shootout, ending with the deaths of Rhogena Nicholas and Dennis Tuttle. (thread)

Five HPD officers were also injured. houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-t…
Police portrayed the cops as heroes. Later, another story emerged. Investigators alleged Gerald Goines, the officer behind the raid, lied about the drug buy he based the operation on.

The stories raised serious questions about HPD's frequent use of no-knock raids -- operations in which officers essentially break into suspects' houses without warning -- and why Narcs weren't wearing bodycameras.

houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-t…

Over the ensuing months, I wrote dozens of articles about this debacle, many with @keribla. We pored through personnel files. Audits. Productivity reports. Lawsuits. (All of which cost our newspaper many hundreds of dollars)

We wrote about Goines’ past. houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-t…

We wrote about the origins of the raid:
houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-t…

We drove to Natchitoches, Louisiana, to interview Rhogena’s elderly mother.
houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-t…

Ms. Nicholas had one wish of HPD: “I want them to clear her name.”

And we followed the case as Goines came under investigation in state court:

houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-t…

And then, months later, in federal court:
houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-t…

And over several months, I tracked down people Goines and other narcs arrested, like Sherman Brooks.
Cops were actually looking for Roy Lee Williams, his next-door neighbor.
Unsuccessful, they detained Sherman, instead, citing a 10th of a gram of crack they said they found.

They released him hours later.
Sherman insists he didn't have any drugs in his house. Otherwise, why didn’t police charge him?
Unsurprisingly, he's still pretty.
“They’re full of shit,” he told me.
houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-t…

I spoke to Barbara Ann Thomas, whose home was raided in 2014. “I thought I was dead,” she told me, describing the fear she felt when a raid team burst into her home:
houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-t…

We wrote about George Benard, who got shot in the stomach when police broke into his home looking for his brother. He spent months in a coma and lost most of his fingers and toes from complications from the shooting houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-t…

As we followed the story, Chief @ArtAcevedo all but banned the use of no-knock raids; ordered raid teams to wear body cameras and created a new specialized narcotics team to handle high-risk warrants.
houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-t…

In November, we dropped the results of our efforts over the past year, with an investigation into wider misconduct in Narcotics:
houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-t…

And another story, probing Goines' work history and his legacy of low-level busts.
houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-t…

A few days ago, I emailed HPD asking how many no-knock raids they’ve conducted since January. The answer: none.

I bring all this up because this work, while deeply rewarding to cover (and challenging), requires a lot of time and resources. We aren't done with this story. But we can’t do this work without support from readers. Subscribe!
checkout.houstonchronicle.com/newsroomexclus…