Warrants, Snitches and Accountability
Local media is reporting some pretty shocking revelations this afternoon about the botched Houston Police Department raid that occurred on January 28th of this year. As you probably already know, that raid left five HPD officers wounded and two citizens, Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas, dead. In the days following the raid, there were some early indications that there was more to the story than just a simple search warrant execution that had resulted in a gun battle. For starters, the affidavit supporting the issuance of the search warrant had been reliant on the word of a Confidential Informant (CI) who had allegedly told the police that he had purchased an amount of heroin from a male at 7815 Harding Street. The CI also allegedly told the police that the male at the residence had more heroin inside the house and that he had been in possession of a 9mm handgun. Officers used that little tidbit about the 9mm to ask the magistrate who signed the warrant to authorize them to do