Photo: Elizabeth Conley, Houston Chronicle / Staff Photographer Photo: Elizabeth Conley, Houston Chronicle / Staff Photographer

Even before the deadly drug raid that left two civilians dead, Houston Police Officer Gerald Goines had a troubling history of allegations against him.

The undercover case agent in the Jan. 28 Pecan Park raid had been involved in multiple shootings, racked up a smattering of written reprimands, faced several lawsuits and is currently accused of fabricating a drug deal then lying about it in court to win a conviction against a man who has long maintained he’s innocent, according to a Houston Chronicle review of internal police records and court documents.

Through it all, the longtime narcotics officer consistently racked up glowing reviews and praise from supervisors who called his work “impressive” and wrote that he set a “good example for new officers in the squad,” according to police records. Last month, as Goines lay in the hospital after the gun battle, Chief Art Acevedo praised his courage, describing the 54-year-old sergeant as “strong as an ox” and “tough as nails.”

But on Friday, Acevedo offered a very different narrative. Now, he said, the veteran officer — who’s still in the hospital recovering from a gunshot wound to the neck — could face criminal charges after investigators realized they couldn’t find the informant reportedly behind the undercover buy used to justify the no-knock warrant.

Law enforcement experts say that’s indicative of a unit without sufficient oversight, where repeated complaints and lawsuits don’t lead to any apparent internal review.

“The number and type of incidents should be a red flag for any police organization to go back and look at exactly what happened in any and all of the incidents,” said Larry Karson, associate professor of criminal justice at the University of Houston-Downtown.

The Chronicle typically does not publish the names of undercover officers, but Goines was publicly identified Friday after the release of recent court documents.

Previous drug buys questioned

Previous allegations surfaced about Goines in at least two drug buys, with the officer accused of lying under oath and mishandling drug evidence, and questions arising about his use of a confidential informant.

One of those cases — which stems from a decade-old drug bust — is still winding its way through the appeals process, as attorneys for 63-year-old Otis Mallet argue that he’s innocent and was wrongfully convicted as the result of the case agent’s alleged misconduct.

The 2011 conviction stemmed from a drug bust three years earlier, when Goines met up with Mallet’s brother at a house on Danube Street for an undercover buy. Goines planned to make a crack bust with $200 of police money, which he allegedly handed over to Mallet’s brother, Steven, according to court records.

Afterward, he said, he watched the man go over to Mallet, who plucked something out of a can in his truck and handed it over in exchange for the cash. Then Steven returned with the score: a quarter of crack, records show.

Goines was the only witness to the alleged deal. After he drove away, backup officers swooped in to make the arrest, seizing a can containing crack cocaine from behind the house next door. When the case made it to trial, Goines testified in court that he watched Mallet take the can from his truck and put it by the neighbors’ house while police were arresting his brother.

But a neighbor disputed that, saying she’d been talking to Mallet during the arrest and he didn’t move anything. She also reported seeing someone else on the property two times earlier in the day, while another neighbor testified that Mallet did not put the can there.

During the bust, police seized $1,668 in cash, but the $200 in buy money was initially marked down as “LOST” — then noted the following month as an expense allegedly paid to a confidential informant. But Goines never mentioned the informant in his narrative during trial or in incident reports, and it’s not clear if the alleged snitch actually existed.

Though Mallet’s brother pleaded guilty to time served in order to get out of jail, he refused the first plea offer that would have required him to attest to his brother’s guilt. Mallet, meanwhile, ended up taking the case to trial, but the state never told defense attorneys in advance about the inconsistencies or the suspect existence of the confidential informant.

Instead, the allegations came to light after attorney Jonathan Landers filed an appeal claiming the state had suppressed evidence that could have supported the defense’s theory that someone else hid the drugs.

“The new evidence discovered in this case shows that Officer Goines testified falsely and that no drug deal, as described by Goines, took place,” Landers wrote in court documents. “Mallet was convicted based on Goines’ perjured testimony.”

Although Mallet is out, the appeal has been sitting in front of a local judge for more than a year. If a court sides with him, it could pave the way to overturning his conviction and qualifying for state compensation for the years spent behind bars.

Six years before the bust at Mallet’s house, Goines landed in hot water in connection with another drug bust when he was reprimanded for leaving evidence — seized crack cocaine — in his truck for two months and failing to tag it.

Earning accolades

A competitive powerlifter, Goines joined the Houston Police Department in 1984, and his work soon earned notice and accolades.

One early commendation came in 1987, after he investigated a burglary in far southeast Houston. But that same year, he received his first reprimand after confronting a person — it’s not clear if a civilian or a fellow officer — with a possibly intimidating suggestion: “We need to go to the gym and straighten this out man-to-man,” he said.

Over the years, he racked up several other minor blemishes to his record, including one, that same year, for failing to show up at court to respond to a subpoena.

His managers praised him, however, for his fast response to burglary calls, his work on a tactical team in southeast Houston and his role in an undercover investigation into a south Houston hotel doubling as a hotspot for prostitutes and drugs.

“By the end of the assignment, they had been in the area of a murder, their cover had almost been revealed, and they were subjected to the constant danger of their surroundings,” supervisors wrote of the team. “Their tenacity and expertise, however, resulted in the arrest of eleven suspects.”

Even after the allegations emerged Friday, a former supervisor stuck up for him, mostly.

“He was a good narcotics officer. He’s not corrupt, but he’s lazy with his paperwork,” the ex-officer said. “He has a history of not doing his reports until afterwards.”

1992 shooting, roadway gun battle

An incident involving Goines drew questions in 1992, when he was shot in an undercover operation in southwest Houston. After wrapping up a controlled buy, Goines started urinating by an apartment building in the area, sparking the ire of resident Pedro Pineda.

Pineda went outside to confront the officer but didn’t realize that he was police, the Chronicle reported at the time.

“He first tried to make the officer leave, but there was a language barrier,” a police spokesman said at the time. “The officer waved him off and made a gesture at his pants, like he was patting the side of his belt.”

Thinking the officer was menacing him with a weapon, Pineda got a pistol from his home and shot Goines in the cheek. A grand jury later declined to file charges against Pineda.

The officer’s personnel file makes no mention of the incident.

Five years later, Goines was at the center of another controversial shooting that began when he was driving south in an unmarked car, while undercover, and tried to merge onto the Southwest Freeway.

But a Chevy driver allegedly cut Goines off, and the two men “exchanged looks and possibly hand signs over the incident,” according to Chronicle archives.

A police spokesman said that after seeing a gun in the car, the officer called for back-up and followed the vehicle as it exited the loop onto the service road. The other driver, Reginald Dorsey, then leaned out of his car and started shooting at Goines, who returned fire from a moving vehicle.

In the end, Dorsey was hit and died from his injuries. The officer recovered and returned to duty.

Like the 1992 shooting, no mention of the incident is found in the officer’s personnel file.

Another shooting, a suspension

In July 2002, the officer was wrapped up in another shooting — one that occurred while he was off-duty as he returned to his southwest Houston apartment with his 10-year-old daughter.

As he was walking to his apartment, two people accosted him and tried to rob him at gunpoint, according to Chronicle archives. The officer grabbed his own pistol and shot one of the assailants, James Sullivan, 17, in the abdomen. Sullivan survived, and was later charged. A grand jury no-billed the officer.

In 2005, the officer received another reprimand after responding to a domestic violence call. Six years after that, he was suspended for one day, documents show, after an incident in which a relative called and told him she had been sexually assaulted.

Goines drove to the dealership where the alleged perpetrator worked, then got into a physical confrontation with the man.

The officer’s actions “are a clear indication of a lack of sound judgment,” then-Chief Charles A. McClelland wrote in a letter informing Goines of his suspension.

Work praised

Despite the occasional reprimands, Goines generally garnered positive evaluations.

In 2009, supervisors wrote that the officer “is a squad leader and actively volunteers to assist colleagues in the performance of their duties… (and) utilizes CIs to positive ends and performs routine duties with the highest level of safety awareness.”

In 2012, supervisors praised his role helping investigate a sports bar owner who was selling drugs, and allowing illegal gambling and alcohol sales. The investigation ended with 15 people arrested on drug or weapons charges, 16 gun seizures, and $12,000 seized in cash.

In 2013, he was lauded for his role in a highway drug seizure that netted more than 26 kilograms of cocaine.

That same year, though, he led a raid that ended in gunfire and eventually a lawsuit. Police burst into a south Houston home looking for a man they suspected of selling PCP.

Police later said that George Benard - the target's brother - appeared to be reaching for a weapon and ignored verbal commands, so one of the officers shot him in the stomach.

HPD officials said the day after the raid that Benard ignored repeated verbal commands to show his hands. Benard, however, testified that he raised his hands as soon as police flooded the small home.

“When they said, ‘Freeze,’ I threw my hands up and that’s when I got shot,” Benard said, disputing that account in court documents. “It happened too fast. They didn’t give me a chance to say nothing, do nothing. They just came in and shot.”

The then-38-year-old spent two months in a coma and all of his fingers and toes were amputated, records show.

During the raid, officers found 122 grams of PCP, a gram of marijuana, and two firearms, according to a search warrant return, but prosecutors ultimately dismissed charges against him when they decided they couldn’t prove the drugs were his, according to criminal justice sources.

A federal judge dismissed Benard’s claims against the city, the police department and Goines, but allowed the lawsuit against another officer to proceed. The city eventually paid $85,000 to settle the case.

Internal investigation

Acevedo said Friday that Goines has been removed from duty pending the investigation, and vowed the department would review his previous cases.

Karson, the criminal justice expert, said the Houston Police Department has a responsibility to look at what happened and examine how to address future problems.

“Some recognize that after a number of years of working in a field such as narcotics it might be appropriate to rotate an officer out of that stressful position,” he said. “The reason for rotating somebody out is you can quickly become cynical from the work and it may end up leading to a compromise of your ethics, never mind the mental damage it can do to you and how you perceive the people you serve.”

Karson said the case appears similar to one in Atlanta in which officers executed a drug raid on the wrong house and then shot a 92-year-old woman in the home. The officers were eventually sentenced to federal prison and the city reached a nearly $5 million settlement with the woman’s family, according to news reports of the incident.

Defense attorney Doug Murphy, president of the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association, said the investigation now poses a problem for the Harris County District Attorney’s Office.

“His trustworthiness is completely in question,” Murphy said. “If this guy has done this once, he’s done it many, many times.”

James Pinkerton and Samantha Ketterer contributed to this report.

keri.blakinger@chron.com

st.john.smith@chron.com