The
no-knock search warrant for the drug raid that
killed a middle-aged couple in their Houston home on January 28 seems to have been based on a "controlled buy" that never happened by a confidential informant who does not exist. According to a February 8
search warrant affidavit obtained by KPRC, the NBC station in Houston, investigators looking into the raid at 7815 Harding Street, the home of Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas,
have been unable to identify the C.I. who supposedly bought heroin from Tuttle the day before.Sgt. Richard Bass submitted the February 8 affidavit in support of a warrant to search a cellphone used by Steven Bryant, a narcotics officer who participated in the raid and who was
suspended last week because of unanswered questions about the warrant for it, which was obtained by Gerald Goines, another narcotics officer. Bass says Bryant talked to Goines, who was shot during the raid and remains hospitalized, and relayed the name of the C.I., who denied making the purchase described in Goines' affidavit.
Bryant went back to Goines and got the name of another C.I., who also denied participating in the controlled buy.
Investigators eventually talked to all of the informants known to work with Goines, and "all denied making a buy for Goines from the Harding Street residence, and ever purchasing narcotics from Tuttle or Nicholas."If that transaction did not actually happen, it would explain why
police found no heroin at the house, where the C.I. supposedly had seen many bags of it. The only drugs found in the search were small amounts of cocaine and marijuana, consistent with personal use.
Nor did police find the 9mm semi-automatic handgun that Goines said the C.I. also mentioned. Bass notes another inconsistency: While Goines' affidavit says Bryant saw the brown powder purchased by the C.I. and recognized it as black-tar heroin, Bryant told Bass he did not see the heroin until he was asked to retrieve it from Goines' car so it could be tested.
Comment: This piece is from back in 2015, and the divide has only grown since its writing. At this point, one has to wonder how social media actually serves us as its users. It seems social media does little more than simply increase echo-chambers, polarize views, censor dissenting voices
and suck up personal data to be sold to advertisers. So why are we all on these platforms again?
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