This is one of those things that
may be something, and may be nothing; what follows is pure speculation, so
please don’t take it as fact. A while back, Carlos Coy included this in one of
his letters:
When
cops, in a Houston suburb, ran in the wrong house and killed an innocent man, I
held a televised press conference, promising that those responsible would pay
for their carelessness. Sadly, I was just high and talking shit and never
followed through, but I know I had some people nervous.
You can read the whole thing at the
above link. It piqued my curiosity, so I’ve been looking for footage of his
press conference. I still haven’t found any, but I did run across the case of
Pedro Oregon, who was gunned down by HPD in 1998. It may or may not be the case
Coy was talking about, but for the sake of argument, let’s say it was.
There were a lot of disturbing
aspects of that case, but a brief summary is this: A man high on crack lead
police to an apartment where he said his drug dealer was, on the promise that
they would release him.
What followed, it appears, was a
keystone-cop-like moment where all of them tried to squeeze through a narrow
hallway towards Pedro Oregon, the fleeing suspect; The officer at the front of the bottleneck
was accidentally shot in the back of his bullet proof vest by one of his compatriots.
Following that, a hail of bullets was unleashed against Oregon; according to
the civil suit officers fired 33(!) bullets into the bedroom. Oregon fired 0.
From the Houston Chronicle via LULAC:
“The
family said police continued to fire at their father even after he had
collapsed to the floor. An autopsy revealed that 9 of the 12 shots were fired at
a downward trajectory. It also showed that Oregon had received a gunshot wound
to the head, left shoulder and left hand, and nine wounds to the back.”
So…Yeah. A gun was found near the
body, but nary a trace of drugs in the apartment, or in Pedro Oregon’s blood. A
Grand Jury no-billed a case against five of the officers, and charged a sixth
with a misdemeanor. This happened under Johnny Holmes, Chuck Rosenthal’s predecessor.
Still, “an internal police investigation found all the officers had violated
not only department policies but also state and federal laws.”
In light of these violations and broken laws, Police Chief Bradford chose to fire
them. Oregon's family brought a civil suit which was apparently sent all the way up
to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals; in an unrelated but interesting vein, defending
the Houston Police Department was then-prosecutor Chip Lewis.
Now, I’m generally not a huge proponent
of conspiracy theories, and I’m hesitant to make connections if I can’t back
them up. I don’t know that the case mentioned in SPM’s letter was the Pedro
Oregon case, but it’s a good illustration of the environment present after any
such shooting. This was a huge, very public fuck-up by HPD. Articles from the
time suggest that there was a lot of public outrage over Oregon’s death, and a
sense that that the police department, or at least this particular unit, had
been running amok for too long.
Seeing someone like Carlos Coy, the
antithesis of everything the justice system professes to stand for, publically
lambast them in this heated situation or one like it…Well, I can see that making him
some enemies.
