Name: 'An operation completely out of control': Damning HPD narcotics audit reveals hundreds of errors
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'An operation completely out of control': Damning HPD narcotics audit reveals hundreds of errors

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This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigateUnauthorized informant payments. Missing case review sheets. Incomplete offense reports. Hundreds of other administrative errors by undercover Houston Police narcotics officers.When internal auditors probed the Narcotics Division’s street level drug-suppression squads, they found widespread sloppiness and lax supervision.The document — which the Houston Police Department released in a post on Twitter after a series of stories in the Chronicle about the department’s lack of transparency and after District Attorney Kim Ogg announced new charges against six former police officers tied to the Harding Street raid — is the widest internal examination, to date, of problems within the police department’s embattled narcotics division.But critics said the audit suffered from shortcomings and failed to thoroughly probe failures that led to problems.More from St. John Barned-SmithChief Art Acevedo ordered the investigative audit after last year’s Harding Street drug raid, which ended with the deaths of homeowners Rhogena Nicholas and Dennis Tuttle. , the officer who led the operation. Goines was later accused of lying about the drug buy he based the operation on and is charged with felony murder and other crimes. His former partner, Steven Bryant, faces charges of tampering with a government record.Acevedo repeatedly declined to release the document publicly, despite calls to do so, until Wednesday night. He said in a later tweet Wednesday night that Ogg’s office had ask that he withhold the audit as recently as last week.Most of the information authorities have released previously centered on misconduct by Goines and Bryant, but auditors took a wider approach in their review. They 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.Wrong Door:The auditors — former Assistant Chief Pete Lopez, seven sergeants and one police officer — found policy violations due to “administrative errors committed by Narcotics case agents and supervisors,” and found that officers didn’t follow policies related to “warrant services, operations planning, and handling of confidential informants.”by on ScribdThe authors found “numerous errors” related to confidential informant payments, but said they could not make conclusions about illegal activity without the ability to interview confidential informants or witnesses.In February, Acevedo released — — 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.After several about Acevedo’s commitment to transparency, Mayor Sylvester Turner agreed last week to review confidentially.After Ogg on Wednesday — as well as one of Goines’ old partners and three former narcotics supervisors — the police department released the audit in a tweet.Related:The document shows auditors reviewed the division’s policies related to warrant services, operations planning, handling of confidential informants, improper handling of evidence, 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; cases without tactical plans or with missing documentation. They found dozens of cases which 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. About 25 percent of the time, supervisors failed to sign case file review sheets, and auditors found many cases were turned in six months to a year late -- far longer than the 10 working days allotted by policy.The Chronicle shared the findings of portions of a draft of the audit that duplicated what was in the final report with several policing experts, community leaders and former law enforcement officers.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, Texas.Overturned: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” while completing required paperwork.Auditors found that in the 84 casefiles they reviewed, Goines submitted evidence late 48 percent of the time (40 times) and made unauthorized informant payments 18 times. A quarter of the cases he filed -- 21 -- did not have tactical plans, the critical documents that officers create showing how they plan to carry out a search warrant raid.Four times, investigators found cases with no search warrant on file. Three cases included problems where there was inadequate documentation about the case’s informant. Two dozen cases lacked case review sheets. Auditors found discrepancies in Goines’ expenses 23 times. In two cases, there were discrepancies in evidence, and another two cases, evidence submission slips were missing.Other problems included incomplete offense reports, inadequate offense reports, case tracking errors, and more than a half dozen cases where the audit team noted problems with the “thoroughness of investigation.”Numerous times, Goines paid confidential informants without getting necessary approvals from supervisors, the document shows.QUESTIONABLE CASES:The audit captured numerous other errors in Goines’ casework, including informant receipts with dates that didn’t match controlled buys; dates that conflict with expense reports or offense reports or other basic case facts.Still other times, auditors found “Goines’ informant payments reveal potential overpayment of informants for miniscule amounts of narcotics,” including paying $100 for eight grams of marijuana when the department normally authorized officers to spend $40 per pound.Bryant’s casework showed other problems. A review of 147 cases found that more than 30 percent of the time, he did not include a required ‘case review sheet.’ In 18 percent of the cases, he failed to turn case files in after the investigation was complete. Auditors also found problems with thoroughness of his investigations, discrepancies with evidence and expenses; and inadequate or incomplete offense reports.Other times, they found he’d listed incorrect addresses, and one incident where he appeared to have paid a CI twice in order to avoid a sergeant’s approval.FEDERAL CASE:Auditors then looked at the other members of Squad 14 and Squad 15, the two general enforcement squads covering south Houston. The review of 173 cases found 306 errors. The most common problem they discovered was that officers failed to include a case review sheet with their investigative packets, but they also found incomplete offense reports, discrepancies in evidence, expenses and warrants, and sloppily conducted investigations.Auditors looked at 77 cases from Squad 14. They found the widest problems were missing case review sheets. The second worst problem was Thoroughness of Investigation.When auditors looked at the rest of Goines’ squad, they examined 57 cases (separate from their review of Goines/Bryant’s cases) and found discrepancies in evidence, expenses, missing case review sheets and other problems.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.Auditors also found that almost 40 percent of the time, case agents “failed to document pertinent details in the offense report, such as who was present, location of the evidence, and other information that would aid the prosecution.”Houston NAACP President James Douglas said: “I wouldn’t have confidence in anything that came from this division,” he said. “This calls into questions 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.”Related:The Chronicle shared the findings with three former Houston police narcotics supervisors, who declined to speak on the record because they said they were concerned about retaliation from their former colleagues.They said that while many of the problems were “administrative,” the lack of attention to detail sends the message that officers think they can act with impunity.“The sergeants and lieutenants weren't holding their feet to the fire,” one said. “You think if Gerald had a lieutenant with him, or a sergeant with him, that he would have come out there with no dope, or said he sent in an informant when he didn’t?” he asked.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, . , along with Goines’ other former partner, Hodgie Armstrong. Three supervisors — Sgt. Clemente Reyna, Sgt. Tommy Woods and Lt. Robert Gonzales also retired. Former Narcotics Commander Paul Follis was transferred to a different post, the Hobby Airport Division.Prosecutors and believe more than won on his . Three defendants have seen their .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 bodycameras while performing drug raids, electronic case management, and mandated officers provide document all interactions with confidential informants. Finally, he added requirements to perform yearly background checks on confidential informants and random face-to-face reviews of officers’ informants.

This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigateUnauthorized informant payments. Missing case review sheets. Incomplete offense reports. Hundreds of other administrative errors by undercover Houston Police narcotics officers.When internal auditors probed the Narcotics Division’s street level drug-suppression squads, they found widespread sloppiness and lax supervision.The document — which the Houston Police Department released in a post on Twitter after a series of stories in the Chronicle about the department’s lack of transparency and after District Attorney Kim Ogg announced...

'An operation completely out of control': Damning HPD narcotics audit reveals hundreds of errors

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