Matt Stevens and Elisha Brown

<h1>The FBI has opened a civil rights investigation into the actions of Houston police officers in connection with a drug raid that ended in a deadly shootout last month, the federal agency and the Houston Police Department announced Wednesday.</h1>

In a statement, the FBI specified it was investigating allegations that a search warrant that was executed at the beginning of the deadly Jan. 28 raid “was based on false, fabricated information.” Chief Art Acevedo has said one of his narcotics officers, Gerald Goines, lied about using a confidential informant to justify searching the home. The chief has placed Goines on administrative leave.

Acevedo said in an afternoon news conference that the FBI’s investigation would be “collaborative” but also “independent” of the one his department was already conducting.

“We welcome that in the spirit of transparency,” he said.

Also on Wednesday, the Harris County District Attorney’s Office said it had begun a review of more than 1,400 criminal cases spanning Goines’ career, 27 of which are active.

“Our duty is to see that justice is done in every case,” Kim Ogg, the Harris County district attorney, said in a statement.

In a telephone interview Wednesday night, Nicole DeBorde, a lawyer for Goines, called the move by the district attorney the “right and sensible thing to do.”

“We welcome closer scrutiny into his work,” DeBorde said. “He’s been a police officer for 35 years, and what I’m hearing is that he’s a man of integrity and his colleagues think highly of him.”

As for the FBI investigation, she said: “We’ve been asking for an independent investigation. We’re happy that this is happening.”

The announcements about the investigations and reviews were just two of several developments that took place Wednesday in connection with the raid, in which two suspects were killed and five officers wounded. The case has grown more complicated and come under increased scrutiny as additional information about it has trickled out.

Acevedo also said Wednesday that a new policy he had alluded to earlier this week — one that will largely end the practice of police officers forcibly entering homes without warning — had been issued and would take effect immediately.

He also said the department would be “moving quickly” to ensure that officers conducting SWAT operations and executing search warrants would be wearing body cameras.

“We believe in our Police Department that when you do execute a search warrant, an arrest warrant, and force entry into a residence or a business, that there’s a high potential for a use of force,” Acevedo said.

As for the use of body-worn cameras, he said it was important “to have a record” from which “people can form their own opinions when questions are raised.”

The drug operation in question took place in the early evening on Jan. 28 when a team of officers executed a search warrant at a home about 7 miles southeast of downtown Houston. People inside the home began to shoot and the officers fired back, police have said.

Two suspects, Dennis Tuttle, 59, and Rhogena Nicholas, 58, died in the shootout, police said. Four officers were shot and a fifth officer suffered a knee injury.

Last week Acevedo disclosed that Goines had lied about using a confidential informant to justify searching the home. He has said that Goines, who was among the officers injured in the shootout, could face criminal charges — a point reiterated by the district attorney’s office Wednesday.

DeBorde has called Acevedo’s comments about criminal charges “very premature” and has suggested that “there is scapegoating going on.” On Wednesday she said Goines had been released from the hospital but would eventually have additional surgery.

Acevedo said Monday that the Police Department would largely end the practice of forcibly entering homes to search them without warning as officers did the evening of the deadly raid. Moving forward, he said that if officers want to use the tactic, known as no-knock warrants, they would need his permission.

He emphasized that point Wednesday while announcing that the policy had taken effect.

“We don’t want to wait until we have more death,” he said.

This article originally appeared in <a id="7bdd8a71-944b-4226-b6d7-122519e08ccb" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/20/us/gerald-goines-houston-police-raid.html">The New York Times</a>.

FBI to investigate Houston police officers after deadly drug raid

In a statement, the FBI specified it was investigating allegations that a search warrant that was executed at the beginning of the deadly Jan. 28 raid “was based on false, fabricated information.”

<h1>A police sergeant in Virginia who was assigned tomonitor the protests related to Gov. Ralph Northam was suspended Wednesday after being identified by an anti-fascist group as having an “affinity with white nationalist groups.”</h1>

The sergeant, Robert A. Stamm, 36, “has been placed on paid administrative leave pending the results of a review,” the Virginia Division of Capitol Police said in a statement. Stamm joined the division in 2014 and was promoted to his current rank last year, officials said.

“There is a review policy in place, and we will follow that policy,” Col. Anthony S. Pike, the division’s chief, said in the statement.

Reached by telephone Wednesday night, Stamm declined to comment.

Authorities said in the statement they were “made aware” early Wednesday morning of a “possible violation of division policy” by Stamm. A police official specified that the possible violation that prompted the suspension was outlined in a blog post published Tuesday by Antifascist of the Seven Hills. The group describes itself as an organization that seeks “to fight fascists” in Richmond, Virginia, “as communists and anarchists united in militant opposition.”

In the blog post, the group published several pictures — apparently pulled from Stamm’s social media accounts — of what it said was him with tattoos, flags and banners it said were symbols and images associated with Nazis and white supremacists.

Brian Levin of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, said some of the symbols could have “dual messages.” For instance, the Wolfsangel symbol — which resembles one of the tattoos— is a centuries-old insignia that was later used in Nazi Germany, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

“These symbols, whether Wolfsangel or others, embrace Nordic history and culture,” Levin said. “A lot of this has been appropriated by modern-day white supremacists and neo-Nazis.”

The anti-fascist group said Stamm came to its attention during the recent protests on the Capitol grounds during which people have demanded that Northam resign over a racist photo in his medical school yearbook. Stamm came to the attention of anti-fascists because he had a large Band-Aid covering his neck during one of the protests, the group said in its blog post. The police official confirmed that Stamm had been assigned to patrol Virginia’s Executive Mansion at least twice in recent days.

The group also alleges that on Stamm’s Facebook page — which, along with other social media accounts appears to have been deleted — he was “friends with a number of people who claim to be associated with the group Asatru Folk Assembly” and at one point earlier this year added a profile photo of himself with what the group said was the Asatru Folk Assembly logo overlaid on it.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has called the Asatru Folk Assembly “perhaps this country’s largest neo-Völkisch hate group.” Neo-Völkisch adherents, the Law Center says, are “spirituality premised on the survival of white Europeans and the preservation of dead or dying cultures they presume to embody” and “organized around ethnocentricity and archaic notions of gender.”

As recently as 2015, the FBI foiled a plot by two men in the Richmond area who ascribed “to a white supremacy extremist version of the Asatru faith,” an FBI agent wrote in a federal affidavit. The plot, the agent alleged, involved shooting or bombing black churches and Jewish synagogues and doing harm to a gun store owner.

This article originally appeared in <a id="f129ca6b-9490-4240-856c-fbb92dc7af94" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/06/us/virginia-cop-white-supremacist.html">The New York Times</a>.

Virginia police sergeant suspended after Antifa ties him to white nationalism

“There is a review policy in place, and we will follow that policy,” Col. Anthony S. Pike, the division’s chief, said in the statement.

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Matt Stevens and Elisha Brown

Articles written by the author

FBI to investigate Houston police officers after deadly drug raid

Virginia police sergeant suspended after Antifa ties him to white nationalism