Art Acevedo is returning to Texas and says he’s anxious to discuss a deadly police raid that happened under his watch in 2019.
The former chief of the Houston Police Department, near the end of a Tuesday news conference where he announced he was resigning as the interim police chief of a Denver suburb, briefly discussed the botched drug raid on Harding Street in Houston where police shot and killed Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas under false pretenses nearly five years ago.
Acevedo, who worked as HPD chief from 2016-21, had been asked about a recent KPRC report that revealed he was recently served with a subpoena to testify in a federal lawsuit the victims’ families filed against the City of Houston.
“That’s for a deposition involving the Harding Street tragedy. By the way, I look forward to that deposition,” Acevedo said in response to a question from a reporter in Colorado. “… I am really looking forward to that deposition, because if it wasn’t for this chief, they might have gotten away with it. And that will come out in the deposition.”
Acevedo was originally named as a defendant in a pair of civil lawsuits filed in 2021 by the families of Tuttle and Nicholas, along with the city and 13 current or former Houston police officers. The lawsuits were subsequently consolidated, and court records show Acevedo was dismissed as a defendant last October.
An HPD narcotics squad executed a no-knock search warrant on the home of Tuttle, 59 and Nicholas, 58, on Jan. 28, 2019. According to police, the couple fired at officers as they entered the residence. The raid left the couple dead while wounding multiple officers – including former officer Gerald Goines, who had led the raid.
An internal investigation subsequently found that Goines and fellow HPD officer Steven Bryant had fabricated a story about a confidential informant purchasing heroin from the couple’s home in order to obtain the search warrant, according to Harris County prosecutors. Bryant pleaded guilty in 2021 to a criminal charge of obstructing justice by falsifying records.
Acevedo, 59, was served with the subpoena Jan. 8 at Aurora City Hall and his deposition is scheduled for Jan. 24 in Denver, court records show. He said Tuesday that the ongoing lawsuit and his upcoming deposition were unrelated to his decision to resign as interim police chief in Aurora, Colorado, where he has worked for the last 13 months.
He cited a desire to be reunited with his wife and son, who have remained in Texas. Acevedo indicated he was moving to Austin, where he served as police chief before taking the job in Houston.
“I thought I would be here two or three years, but I miss my kid. I miss my family,” he said. “Every time I get a video of my son wrestling and I’m not there … I can’t be without my boy and I can’t move him right now, so I’ve got to get home to him.”
Aurora’s mayor and city manager both praised Acevedo and his work in Colorado, where he will be succeeded as interim police chief by Heather Morris, who had previously worked for Acevedo in Houston.
Acevedo left Houston to become the police chief in Miami, Florida, where he was fired after six months on the job.
Acevedo, a Cuban immigrant known for being outspoken, said Tuesday he still loves being a cop and has too much energy to consider retirement, although he did not reveal any subsequent career plans.
“Remember, if you’re in Texas, you really don’t need a passport, you can come and visit me,” he said. “The coffee’s always on, the barbecue’s always hot and the hospitality will be there.”