Poodle's dark side (no peeking).

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Poodle
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Poodle's dark side (no peeking).

Post by Poodle »

For my villains to plot and scheme.
Last edited by Poodle on Sat Jun 05, 2021 12:53 am, edited 1 time in total.
Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination circles the world. -Albert Einstein.
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Poodle
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Location: New Zealand

Re: Poodle's dark side (no peeking).

Post by Poodle »

People who really know Houston know that it has a dark heart. Although it has glamour and sophistication and money, it also has drugs, violence and organised crime. It has the ports and access to the Bay of Mexico. No one talks about it but more drugs and human trafficking hapoens throygh Houston than over the border.
The cops have a reputation for being flexible about how and when they apply the law.

Maybe if you are ruthless enough or cunning enough you can carve yourself a piece of the action.
Last edited by Poodle on Sat Jun 05, 2021 12:51 am, edited 1 time in total.
Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination circles the world. -Albert Einstein.
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Poodle
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Location: New Zealand

Re: Poodle's dark side (no peeking).

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From the Houston Chronicle

Editorial: Murder, organized crime indictments at HPD raise alarm about deeper corruption
The Editorial Board
Updated: Jan. 28, 2021 3 a.m.
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Officers surround a tour van with a grand jury inside after the group visited on Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2020, in Houston the property on 7185 Harding Street where two Houston homeowners were shot to death during a botched drug raid in January 2019.

Marie D. De Jesús, Houston Chronicle / Staff Photographer
After a troubling audit of his narcotics division in July, Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo told this editorial board: “Sloppiness does not equate to corruption.”

Maybe not. But now that a dozen police officers have been indicted — two of them on murder charges — corruption may be putting it mildly.

Today marks two years since the botched Harding Street raid left two innocent people dead and five officers wounded and we still don’t know the extent of the dirty dealing within the Houston Police Department.

What we do know is that Acevedo should stop depicting this tragedy as the product of a few rogue officers. He should acknowledge publicly the scope of this scandal, and root out its causes, if he wants to rid his department of any residual rot.

With the charges announced this week, the indictment count stands at 12 — with seven of the current or former officers facing the possibility of life sentences, if convicted. Hardly a bushel but far from one or two bad apples.

Most striking among the new indictments announced Monday by Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg, is a murder charge against Officer Felipe Gallegos of the narcotics unit. He is the second officer charged with murder in the deaths of husband and wife homeowners Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas, who were killed Jan. 28, 2019 during the raid.
Ignorance isn’t an American virtue. Bring back...
The Editorial Board
Initial reports painted a picture of veteran narcotics officers executing a no-knock warrant being met with gunfire as they burst into a heroin dealer’s den. That story quickly fell apart as investigators discovered no heroin on site and announced they were looking into squad leader Gerald Goines for lying about buying drugs from the home.

That investigation spread, resulting in state and federal charges against Goines and his partner, Steven Bryant, including two state counts of felony murder for Goines. A reevaluation of his conduct led to an ongoing review of thousands of cases handled by Goines and his colleagues. Ogg’s office has recommended charges be dismissed in dozens of cases where defendants were convicted solely on Goines’ casework.

The new indictments charge eight of the current or former officers with engaging in organized crime in working together to steal overtime, just one layer of illegal activity that prosecutors allege provided cover for dirty officers and sowed the ground for Harding Street.

“The consequences of corruption are that two innocent ordinary people were killed in their homes, four police officers were shot, one of them paralyzed,” Ogg said Monday. A fifth officer was injured during the raid, but was not shot.

She promised to hold errant police officers accountable, and so far, she’s kept her word. Those charges must still be tested in court, but for a city and county long reputed to look the other way when law enforcement turned criminal, accountability is welcome news.

Chief Acevedo told the editorial board Wednesday he will follow suit, launching an internal investigation into the active duty officers who were charged by Ogg for stealing overtime, as well as cast a wider net to ensure the practice hasn’t spread.

“We’re set to meet with the DA’s office to discuss opportunities for other measures we can take to also put safeguards in place,” he said. “We have to hold people accountable.”

This is an important step — one Acevedo could have initiated much earlier if he’d acknowledged the likelihood of a broader problem and probed more deeply within his department.

Acevedo has resisted calls for an independent audit. But until he’s willing to say the word ‘corruption’ it’s hard to have confidence in his internal review.

A partial audit of the narcotics division, released in July after months of delay, already hinted at widespread problems within the narcotics unit. Covering three years’ worth of casework by Goines and Bryant, it found hundreds of administrative errors, missing case review sheets and incomplete reports, unauthorized payments to confidential informants and discrepancies in evidence handling.

Even as the report pointed to systemwide issues that went beyond poor record keeping, Acevedo remained steadfast in his defense and downplayed the problems as “sloppiness.”

Now, the chief should make good on his vows of transparency and tell it to us straight. Everything he doesn’t know, he should entrust an independent auditor to find out.

If Houston police officers did indeed murder innocent people, we should spare no expense, and no ego, to ensure it never happens again.
Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination circles the world. -Albert Einstein.
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Poodle
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Re: Poodle's dark side (no peeking).

Post by Poodle »

There is a reward for Goines and Bryant to be silenced.
50k per person. 5k each for the other 10 officers also indicted.
Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination circles the world. -Albert Einstein.
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