Houston police will mostly end no-knock warrants after fatal drug raid, police chief says
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Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo said Monday that the police department will mostly end no-knock search warrants after two people were killed and five officers were wounded in a drug raid last month.
“The no-knock warrants are going to go away like leaded gasoline in this city,” Acevedo said during a town hall meeting. Any exceptions will have to be approved by his office, Acevedo said. The Associated Press, NPR, the Houston Chronicle (in stories here and here) and the New York Times have coverage.
Acevedo also said in the future officers will begin wearing body cameras when entering buildings for searches. There was no video of the Jan. 28 raid in which Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas were killed.
Officers typically knock and announce their presence before entering a home based on a search warrant, the New York Timex explains. No-knock warrants may be used when officers want to surprise suspects before evidence is destroyed or when suspects pose a threat to officer safety, according to a prior Washington Post opinion story.
But the practice can be dangerous; a 2017 New York Times investigation found that at least 81 civilians and 13 officers had died in no-knock or similar raids from 2010 to 2016.
Tuttle and Nicholas were killed in Houston after undercover narcotics officers entered their home based on a no-knock warrant to find evidence of heroin dealing. Officers found 18 grams of marijuana and 1 gram of cocaine—but no heroin.
Police originally said Tuttle and Nicholas were the first to open fire, but the department later said police apparently fired first when they killed the couple’s dog. Police said Tuttle then opened fire and Nicholas tried to get a gun from an officer who had been shot, according to the NPR account. Both suspects were killed.
Acevedo recently revealed there were “material untruths or lies” in an affidavit used to obtain the search warrant. Two officers have been placed on administrative leave pending an investigation, according to the New York Times.
“I’m very confident that we’re going to have criminal charges on one or more police officers,” Acevedo said Monday.
The police department in Little Rock, Arkansas, has been sued in connection with no-knock warrants, according to the Associated Press. The suit claims police used misleading or false information to obtain warrants that mostly targeted black citizens.
A 2006 Supreme Court case, Hudson v. Michigan, refused to exclude evidence obtained by police officers who entered a home with a search warrant but did not follow the general requirements to knock and announce their presence.
Critics had predicted at the time that the decision would lead to the kind of abuses alleged in Little Rock, according to the Washington Post opinion story.
