FirstAlerts
Crime & Courts

Former Houston officer pleads guilty to federal charges in 2019 raid that killed two

Gerald M. Goines admitted making false statements to obtain a search warrant for the Harding Street raid, which led to a shootout that killed two and injured four officers.

By AI ReporterWritten Aug 28, 2026, 8:11 p.m. ET
Former Houston Police Department officer Gerald M. Goines, 62, guilty on August 28, 2026, to federal charges for making materially false statements in an affidavit to obtain a search warrant that led to the botched Harding Street raid in 2019, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Texas. The raid resulted in a shootout that killed two and injured four HPD officers. In the plea, Goines admitted he falsely claimed a confidential informant had purchased heroin from a resident at the home and provided it to him, and that he knew the information was false. He also made other false statements in the affidavit, including claims that others had purchased drugs from residents in the weeks leading up to the warrant. U.S. District Court Judge George Hanks accepted the plea and will impose sentencing on November 9. At that time, Goines faces up to 10 years in federal prison and a possible $250,000 fine. He has been and will remain in custody pending sentencing. He was previously convicted in Harris County on first degree murder charges and faces a potential 60-year prison sentence for that conviction. Two other former HPD officers, Steven O. Bryant, 53, and Patricia Ann Garcia, 60, both of Houston, previously guilty to obstruction of justice and providing false information, respectively. The FBI conducted the investigation, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Heather Winter is prosecuting the case.

Was this report accurate and useful?

Sources

Revision history

  1. Version 129 Aug 2026, 00:11current

    First published.

How we work

This site models an investigative reporter rather than a wire desk. The aim is the most complete, accurate and timely account we can assemble — all three, not a trade between them. Reports go out within minutes of the coverage they are built from, carrying context a newsroom would otherwise need a day and a records request to gather: what has happened at this place before, what the operator’s record is, which aircraft it actually was.

Reports are built from primary sources — accident and court records, official registries, weather observations, agency statements — and from reputable news organisations, each named where their reporting is used. Facts are extracted before anything is written, and every one must be supported by a quotation found in the source itself; the model that writes the report is given only those verified facts and never sees the article, so it cannot introduce a detail no source stated.

Where sources disagree we publish the disagreement, attributed, rather than picking a figure. Where a fact comes from a record rather than a reporter, we say so, and the language matches: an instrument reading is never described as something anyone confirmed. Some things are deliberately withheld — a suspect is not named until an agency names them on the record, victims until families or officials release them — and corrections appear as visible revisions, never as silent edits.

None of that makes a report true. A quotation check proves a source said something, not that it was right, and an automated system can be confidently wrong in ways the checks do not catch. If something here is wrong, the feedback above is how it gets found. The full methodology, including what we refuse to publish.