Man says he was arrested by officer at center of no-knock raid

HOUSTON (FOX 26) — Phillman Bates says he will never forget when it happened to him that day back in 2007, when officers stormed his newly-rented Third Ward home.

"They just kicked my door in," said Bates. "Opened the gate, the burglar bars and kicked the door in. It was a task force. Like 8-to-10 guys."

Bates said he knew one of the officers, a powerfully-built officer named Gerald Goines, AKA “Batman.”

"That was the name they gave him in the neighborhood," described Bates. "Different policemen got different names. He went by 'Batman.'" It was because of his physical size and aggressive tactics, the same tactics that has Goines under scrutiny.

Goines was the case officer on the botched raid on the house on Harding Street. The two residents died in the shootout. Four officers, including Goines, were wounded and another officer was injured.

It's not the first time Goines has been involved in a controversial event. He was shot during what was initially reported as a drug bust but later turned out to be a road rage incident that turned into a shootout back in 1997. The civilian involved had died.

Then in 2002, Goines shot and wounded a man he claimed was trying to rob him in his apartment complex parking lot.

Then on Friday, a police investigation indicated that Goines may have lied to get the search warrant for the Harding Street home that led to the shootout. Houston Police Department Chief Art Acevedo said this calls Goines’ past cases into question.

"We will also be, and we are looking at, once you find problems with the investigator’s veracity, as we are finding here, we have to expand another prong to see where that leads us in terms of other investigations he has conducted,“ said Chief Acevedo on Friday.

Goines’ defense attorney, Nicole DeBorde, said on Monday that the leak of a supposedly-sealed document seems like a set up.

"I do understand that there's pressure," added DeBorde. "What I'm worried about is that maybe the kind of pressure that they're trying to generate by leaking partial pieces of information to make it seem appropriate to possibly charge this case criminally."

Meanwhile, Bates has not been arrested since 2007 and plans to have his case reexamined.