Things that make you go "hmmm..."

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.  

 

http://www.spmaftermath.com/2012/12/dear-family-part-9.html

 

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.

 

http://www.lulac.net/advocacy/issues/rights/hc11-3.html

 

http://www.houstonpress.com/2000-12-28/news/ore-gone-to-hell/2/

 

http://www.ndsn.org/julaug98/lawenf2.html

 

http://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions%5Cunpub%5C99/99-20836.0.wpd.pdf

 

http://www.chiplewislaw.com/Bio/ChipLewis.asp

http://www.lulac.net/advocacy/issues/rights/hc10-19b.html