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The US nuclear arsenal is slightly smaller, at roughly 5,500 total warheads. That equates to a combined total in the range of 1,000-1,200 contemporary grade nuclear warheads. For context in terms of how much destructive power that represents, one atomic bomb leveled the entire city of Hiroshima, Japan and a second did an equal amount of damage to Nagasaki three days later, killing a combined total of a quarter of a million people immediately and perhaps as many as half a million over time from the effects of radiation poisoning. That’s a total of two atomic bombs, vintage 1945. Today’s nuclear weapons are infinitely more powerful and have many times the destructive power of those produced in the closing months of World War II.
The bad news is that such weapons exist, the good news is that the impression made in 1945 was so powerful and lasting that it has kept mankind from trying it again for 76 years. However there have been threats before, including but not limited to Nikita Khrushchev, Richard Nixon and of course now Vladimir Putin.
When considering the likelihood that nuclear weapons will be used you do not want to rely too heavily in your analysis on good judgement. Good judgement like common sense is not very common. More dependable and safer is the doctrine of mutually assured destruction (MAD). MAD is what deterred Khrushchev and Kennedy in 1962 and what has maintained nuclear peace since. MAD is bigger and badder than Putin’s out of control ego. While it would be difficult for Russian officials to orchestrate a coup, it’s not very likely they would stand by as he launched a full nuclear engagement with US and NATO. The ramifications would just be too overwhelming. In totality the idea of Russia launching a full armageddon strike on the West is highly unlikely, as long as the West makes clear its resolve, should that come to pass. That is the lynchpin of the MAD doctrine, that destruction is Mutually Assured. Terrifying but effective throughout the entire history of mankind’s uneasy existence in the shadow of nuclear proliferation.
A World of Risk
While MAD is a functional and effective deterrent it does little to assuage the visceral anxiety the world is now experiencing. The magnitude of the risk is daunting. The most natural human reaction is to want to draw away from the precipice, avoid confrontation. That’s natural, that is an indicator that you are not crazy. The problem is that the risk, the existential threat to humanity is not of our making and not something we can cancel through good judgement alone.
When Vladimir Putin made his decision to send legions of tanks and troops crashing across the Ukrainian border global security was the first casualty. With Putin’s army in Ukraine committing genocide the entire world is at risk and the risk is extreme. That only goes away when Putin’s army goes away and not until. The risk can be mitigated through good judgement but not eliminated entirely. The risk ultimately must be confronted and managed, there is no easy way out.
The Existential Threat of Nuclear Terrorism
Yes the potential for a nuclear engagement represents an existential threat to humanity, but not the only existential threat. An additional threat is nuclear terrorism. While it doesn’t have the capacity to obliterate civilization in the blink of an eye it’s quite a bit more likely to happen, in fact it is happening now.
It was no coincidence that Vladimir Putin began his Special Military Operation in Ukraine with a reminder to any nation that would interfere that “Russia is a nuclear armed nation.” It was intended to keep the US and NATO at bay. To the extent that there are not yet US or NATO forces on the ground in Ukraine it could perhaps be viewed as effective, but the US and NATO are surely interfering in every other way.
The problem with backing off in the face of Putin’s nuclear threats is that any nation or people can be coerced to capitulate to any demand at any time. The threat is limitless. If it works once it will work again and on it goes, and at no point does it ever mean that actual use of nuclear arms is off the table. There can be no semblance of global security under such circumstances.
Putin “Cornered”
The question of what Putin might do if “cornered” depends on accepting the premise that Putin will be cornered or even can be. It is a flawed premise. Putin is not cornered, certainly not in the way that Ukrainian fighters defending Mariupol are now cornered with their backs against the sea. Putin and his army have Russia to retreat into, the largest country on earth. It is highly unlikely that any western military force would pursue them across that border and they understand it.
If there is a cornering of Putin in any sense it is surely one of his own making. While good judgement can mitigate risk bad judgement can just as effectively create risk. Putin has placed himself at great risk through his own reckless behavior. In that sense he now dwells in a self made corner, one from which it would be very difficult to rescue him. If anyone even cared to do that.
In summation, the risk of a full-blown nuclear engagement is real but not extreme as long as Western leaders show strength and resolve. Capitulating to nuclear terrorism on the other hand would amplify the risk not mitigate it. Putin has cornered himself, the West would be well advised not to make the same mistake.
Marc Ash is the founder and former Executive Director of Truthout, and is now founder and Editor of Reader Supported News. On Twitter: @MarcAshRSN
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is an Ethiopian former health minister and an ethnic Tigrayan. (photo: Will Oliver/EPA)
Attorneys Emanuel Powell, left, and Jerryl Christmas accompany Don Clark Jr. to the home of his late father in St. Louis. Clark's father was killed by police officers executing a no-knock raid at multiple addresses in 2017. (photo: Joe Martinez/WP)
The dangerous police tactic has grown in use as judges routinely authorize requests for the surprise raids with little apparent scrutiny of claims by officers
In St. Louis, a judge authorized police to break down the doors of three homes simultaneously without knocking. Officers killed a 63-year-old Black grandfather, and police said they found just over nine grams of heroin, marijuana, fentanyl and hydrocodone in the three homes combined.
In Houston, a judge approved scores of requests for no-knock warrants for officers who relied on unnamed informants. One raid led to a gun battle that left a White man and woman dead and four officers shot, and it failed to turn up the heroin police said they would find. The officer who requested the warrant later admitted he fabricated the confidential informant.
Judges and magistrates are expected to review requests for no-knock warrants — one of the most intrusive and dangerous tactics available to law enforcement — to ensure that citizens are protected from unreasonable searches, as provided in the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.
But judges generally rely on the word of police officers and rarely question the merits of the requests, offering little resistance when they seek authorization for no-knocks, a Washington Post investigation has found. The searches, which were meant to be used sparingly, have become commonplace for drug squads and SWAT teams.
Criminal justice experts estimate that police carry out tens of thousands of no-knock raids every year nationwide, mostly in drug-related searches. But few agencies monitor their use, making the exact number unknown. None of the 50 state court systems or the District of Columbia reported tracking the use of no-knock warrants. And no federal or state government agencies keep tabs on the number of people killed or wounded in the raids.
“The whole system has devolved into a perfunctory bureaucracy that doesn’t take any care or due diligence for how it’s done,” said Peter Kraska, an Eastern Kentucky University professor who has studied no-knock raids for more than three decades. “That wouldn’t be as big of a deal, except that we’re talking about a really extreme policing approach — breaking into people’s homes with a surprise entry with the possibility of finding evidence.”
The raids became a flash point two years ago when Louisville police killed 26-year-old Breonna Taylor inside her apartment as part of a drug investigation involving an ex-boyfriend who didn’t live there. In that case, an officer obtained no-knock warrants for Taylor’s home and four other residences. Police later said they knocked and announced themselves at Taylor’s home, a claim that has been disputed. In a no-knock raid in February, Minneapolis police shot and killed 22-year-old Amir Locke. Body-camera footage shows Locke, who was not the target of the investigation, wrapped in a blanket on a couch with a gun in his hand when police shot him.
Police carrying out 21 no-knock warrants have killed at least 22 people across the country since 2015, according to a review of The Post’s database of fatal shootings by police and hundreds of court records. In one case, an officer was also killed.
Of the 22 people fatally shot during no-knock raids since 2015, 13 were Black or Hispanic. Experts have suggested that high-risk searches disproportionately target Black and Hispanic homes.
In the vast majority of the cases, police said they were searching for illegal drugs and expected the subjects to be armed.
In all but two of these raids, police claimed they encountered someone who had a weapon — in most cases a gun. In at least five raids, police killed someone who was not a focus of the warrant, according to court records and media reports.
The Post obtained documents listing evidence for 13 of the fatal raids: In 12, officers recovered less than three pounds of drugs combined — including marijuana, mushrooms and heroin. Only one raid recovered more: In 2018 in Fort Worth, officers found more than a pound of marijuana, three pounds of mushrooms and more than 16 pounds of a prescription allergy medicine. Officials did not respond to a request for or declined to provide a list quantifying the drugs seized in the other eight raids.
The full tally of fatalities from no-knock warrants is unknown: The Post database includes at least 24 other searches that ended in fatal shootings of civilians, but court officials and police departments were unable or declined to provide records clarifying whether the raids involved no-knock warrants. In 2017, the New York Times examined SWAT team raids and found that at least 81 civilians and 13 officers had died from 2010 through 2016 in searches that involved both no-knock warrants and knock-and-announce warrants.
In recent years, it has become quicker and easier for judges to approve no-knock warrants, bypassing the normal process that usually involves an officer meeting with a judge in person. Software, adopted by hundreds of law enforcement agencies, allows judges to remotely approve requests using computers, cellphones or tablets.
The Post reviewed more than 2,500 warrants in 30 states, examined court and police records, and interviewed dozens of judges, police officials, lawmakers, witnesses and relatives of people who died in raids.
Officers obtaining typical search warrants are required to show a judge they have probable cause, listing the location to be searched and the contraband or evidence they expect to find. They’re also supposed to “knock and announce” before entering homes.
But with a no-knock warrant, police can force their way into a home without warning. The requirements for no-knock warrants may vary by jurisdiction, but are generally guided by a 1997 Supreme Court opinion involving a forced-entry search by police. The court ruled that police seeking to conduct these searches must have a “reasonable suspicion” why knocking and announcing could be dangerous or result in the destruction of evidence. Police are generally expected to make this argument to judges when seeking approval for a no-knock warrant.
“This showing is not high, but the police should be required to make it whenever the reasonableness of a no-knock entry is challenged,” the justice wrote.
Training and educational requirements for judges vary state to state. In some cases, judges or magistrates without law degrees or extensive training are tasked with approving no-knocks.
“It’s set up so that police departments can do whatever they want with regards to no-knocks,” Kraska said.
Across the country, 29 states and 21 cities have approved legislation or ordinances restricting the use of no-knocks, according to Campaign Zero, a police reform group. At least 13 other states and nine other cities have recently considered proposals for such restrictions, the group said.
In Maryland, after Montgomery County Police killed a man in a no-knock raid, the council in 2020 imposed limits on such warrants. Police reported that 108 of 140 search warrants executed by the SWAT team in 2019 were no-knocks.
In South Carolina, Chief Justice Donald W. Beatty ordered a temporary ban on no-knocks in 2020 after a survey by the state court system revealed that magistrates routinely issued warrants without questioning police, and that most “do not understand the gravity of no-knock warrants and do not discern the heightened requirements for issuing a no-knock warrant.”
But many judges say that in evaluating the requests for search warrants, they rely on the officers’ claims in the affidavits because they are filed under oath.
Gordon Marcum, a former municipal judge who approved the no-knock warrant for the 2019 deadly raid in Houston, told The Post in an interview that he considered himself the last line of defense against unjustified searches and carefully scrutinized the warrants he handled. But he said it wasn’t his responsibility to spot patterns, including whether officers appeared to be lying on affidavits or whether police failed to locate the guns or drugs they claimed they would find. Though officers typically must file documents with the court detailing what they seized in raids, judges who sign the warrants aren’t required to examine them.
“It wasn’t my job to do that,” Marcum said. “It’s the officer who’s in charge. The police officer, the supervisor, the captain, the department director, and all of them who have access to those things.”
Police defending these warrants note that the vast majority of them lead to no injuries and are likely to have prevented violence and preserved evidence that otherwise would have been destroyed.
Patrick Yoes, national president of the Fraternal Order of Police, said there are misconceptions about no-knocks, including that police use them frequently and haphazardly. “In reality, there’s a whole lot of assessment that goes into determining whether a no-knock warrant is going to be executed,” Yoes said.
The raids can be deadly not only for residents, but officers as well.
One Texas man, Marvin Guy, is facing charges, including capital murder, after an officer was killed and three others were shot during a 2014 no-knock raid at his home in Killeen. Guy was sleeping when officers smashed his window and slammed a battering ram into his front door. He said he thought he was being robbed and fired a gun through the broken window. Police had suspected that Guy, who had an extensive criminal history, was selling drugs, but no drugs were found in his home. Police said they found trace amounts of a white powder in his car, records show.
Survivors of raids have said they feared that intruders were breaking into their homes. In Louisville, Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend said he fired at police because he didn’t know who was storming the apartment.
Tamika Palmer, Taylor’s mother, said she blames the judge who signed the warrant that led to her daughter’s death as much as she blames the police.
“We know that [police] are not doing the work to get these warrants, that they’re not doing what needs to be done,” she said. “Why would you want to sign your name on that? Why wouldn’t you want to make sure, ‘Let me just take a day or two to make sure you’ve done what you need to.’ … It’s insane, it’s lazy.”
On Feb. 21, 2017, a boom shook Marlon O’Neal from his sleep in his basement bedroom in south St. Louis. Panicked and half-dressed, he told his girlfriend to hide in the closet. She yelled for her 4-year-old son, who was sleeping near the front door.
O’Neal, thinking intruders had broken in, said he crept up the steps and saw red lasers from gun sights aimed at the living room wall. He realized the men, clad in dark clothing, were police. Officers yelled at him to go outside, where police SUVs lined California Avenue.
A SWAT team had already raided his neighbor’s home two doors down. Now, the team of 17 officers converged and headed to a third house next to O’Neal’s home.
Inside was his former father-in-law: 63-year-old Don Clark, known as “Pops.” He was hard of hearing, couldn’t see well and walked with a cane. He slept in a bed near the front door.
Officers smashed a battering ram into Clark’s front door and tossed a flash-bang device inside, according to witness statements and police records. Nicholas Manasco, the first officer in, later told an investigator that Clark shot at him — he said he felt a bullet whiz past him and in the darkness saw someone holding a gun. Manasco shot at Clark, hitting him nine times. He was pronounced dead at a hospital.
O’Neal was not arrested or charged in connection with the raid.
The deadly raid was one of many in which judges gave St. Louis police the go-ahead to target multiple homes simultaneously with no-knock warrants.
In the raid on California Avenue, police initially sought to search two addresses; they added Clark’s home two days later, records show. The affidavits were identical for all three homes.
Detective Thomas Strode of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department accused Clark and others of conducting drug sales and storing weapons and narcotics in homes on California Avenue. In his affidavit, Strode said he also did several weeks of surveillance. He reported a controlled drug buy, but it happened five months earlier and about a mile away from California Avenue, according to the affidavit.
Strode noted in his affidavit that some of the residents of the targeted homes had criminal histories: “Since the targets of the investigation are known to be armed narcotic traffickers, many of whom have a violent history, I am requesting no-knock search warrants” for the three homes.
O’Neal, who lived next to Clark, had felony convictions, including unlawful possession of a firearm in 2010. Ben Byas, another neighbor, was on probation for possession with intent to distribute drugs. And Strode said in the affidavit that Clark had arrests for unlawful use of a weapon, felonious restraint and assault. A Post review of local court records showed Clark, who once owned a security company, had no charges or convictions.
On the morning of the raid, Associate Circuit Court Judge Barbara Peebles signed the warrants.
A court spokesman said Peebles determined there was probable cause “based on the information presented under oath.” Peebles, now a judge in the juvenile court, declined to comment further.
From 2016 through 2018, Strode received approval for at least 43 no-knock warrants, according to a Post analysis of records obtained by ArchCity Defenders, a legal advocacy group helping to represent Clark’s family in a wrongful-death lawsuit filed against the police. Twenty-four of the warrants involved multi-house raids.
In nearly half of those 43 raids for which Strode received approval, officers said they failed to find suspected drugs, according to a review of documents filed in court by police.
Strode did not respond to messages seeking comment. Evita Caldwell, a police spokeswoman, said Strode and Manasco, the officer who fatally shot Clark, no longer work at the St. Louis police department and declined to discuss the terms of their departures. More than five years later, the department and the circuit attorney said they are still investigating the fatal shooting.
Police rely heavily on confidential informants, but experts said they can be unreliable — incentivized to trade questionable information for reduced sentences or other beneficial treatment.
David Moran, a University of Michigan law professor who argued before the Supreme Court in a case about evidence seized during no-knocks, said a raid on one home can easily become a violent confrontation. Carrying out simultaneous no-knock warrants at several homes “just multiplies the risk,” he said.
That risk takes on a new dimension in states with high gun ownership or “stand your ground” laws, including Missouri. In those states, people may legally defend themselves with deadly force if they believe their life is in danger.
Clark had moved into his home a few years earlier and was concerned about crime, his family said.
Sherrie Clark-Torrence, one of Clark’s daughters, said that she doesn’t believe her father used a gun as police claimed, but even if he had, it would have been self-defense. In the family’s lawsuit, they allege that he was unarmed, that he had no criminal convictions and police lied about surveillance of his home.
“He’s already an elderly man in a bad neighborhood,” she said in an interview. “So if he heard a boom and he grabbed his revolver … to protect himself, wouldn’t that be right?”
The city of St. Louis declined to comment, citing the pending lawsuit.
Police said they recovered a .45 caliber Glock handgun, a 9mm Taurus handgun and boxes of ammunition from Clark’s home. A forensics report concluded that one gun had been fired.
Clark’s family disputes that he had any drugs, according to their lawsuit.
At Clark’s home, officers reported finding 8.39 grams of heroin and 0.50 grams of marijuana. They also said they found 20 pills; a lab test determined one to be .005 grams of hydrocodone.
At the home of Ben Byas, police said they recovered 0.1 grams of fentanyl, .08 grams of heroin and fentanyl, and a plastic bag with an unknown white substance.
After the raid, Byas told police he had heroin and cocaine in his home. When a detective asked if he sold them, Byas responded, “No I just pretty much use.” He was arrested, but wasn’t charged.
Police said they seized no drugs at O’Neal’s home. He and his girlfriend claimed officers stole money from a safe in his basement. He questioned whether the raids were worth it.
“You did all these search warrants, and that’s all you found in this house,” he said, referring to Clark’s home. “What about my house? What did you find there? … You know, not nothing.”
‘Take action much quicker’
On a humid afternoon in July 2019 in Port Allen, La., the River West Narcotics Task Force sent a confidential informant to buy $50 worth of methamphetamine from a suspected drug dealer at the Budget 7 Motel, sandwiched between a gas station and another motel near the Mississippi River.
The quick transaction in room No. 5 was enough evidence for West Baton Rouge sheriff’s Deputy Brett Cavaliere to request a no-knock warrant.
Cavaliere filled out the request in his office, using software called CloudGavel. The affidavit was barely four pages long, mostly filled with Cavaliere’s law enforcement experience and boilerplate language.
He typed in one sentence about the suspect: “Affiant states in the last 72 hours, an informant purchased a quantity of methamphetamine during a controlled operation from a Black male at the Budget 7 Motel Room #5.” He didn’t include the suspect’s name, whether he had a gun or who else was in the room.
At 6:06 p.m., with the click of a button, the deputy sent the request to Tonya Lurry, a West Baton Rouge judge, for approval: “Affiant has requested and cause has been shown for the authorization of a ‘NO KNOCK’ entry or entry without announcement to search the aforesaid premises,” it stated.
At 6:17 p.m., Lurry electronically signed it, records show. It’s unclear whether Lurry spoke with the deputy or how much time she spent considering the request.
About 6:40 p.m., Cavaliere approached the motel room with Deputy Vance Matranga and two other West Baton Rouge sheriff’s deputies.
Jessica Clouatre told The Post she was on the bed inside, watching a YouTube video. Her 38-year-old fiance, Josef Richardson, had just showered, and she said he opened the door a crack to let out cigarette smoke. The couple was staying at the motel while searching for a new apartment, and had hosted Richardson’s daughters the day before.
He had a criminal record that included felony convictions for resisting arrest and battery of an officer, and he was on parole after pleading guilty in 2017 to possession with intent to sell drugs. He looked tough with tattoos and gold teeth, but his friends and family knew him as a father of three who enjoyed taking his children shopping and to water parks.
Clouatre said she looked up as deputies rushed in and yelled “sheriff’s office!” She said both she and Richardson had their hands up when one deputy bent Richardson’s arm and brought him to the ground. Within seconds, she said, Matranga had shot Richardson in the back of the neck.
The deputies involved in the raid told a state police investigator that there was a struggle between Cavaliere and Richardson. One deputy said he holstered his gun to help Cavaliere, and Matranga said he fired his gun after seeing Richardson pull out a dark object from the waistband of his shorts, according to interviews with investigators.
But Richardson was unarmed: He was holding a bag of drugs, according to an attorney general’s report. Officers arrested Clouatre, and Richardson died at the scene.
Officers said they recovered about 9 grams of methamphetamine, 9 grams of marijuana, 4.4 grams of cocaine and a few pills containing hydrocodone.
“Anybody selling drugs out of the Budget 7 Motel is not a major player,” said Ron Haley, an attorney representing Richardson’s children in a wrongful-death lawsuit against the sheriff’s office.
The state attorney general ruled the killing was justified. Cavaliere, who is now a lieutenant, did not return requests for comment.
In an interview with The Post, Matranga declined to discuss most details of the case. Matranga, who is now a corporal in the department, also defended Cavaliere, saying he is a “meticulous and thorough” officer. And he said he believed Richardson could have been armed because of his “extensive criminal history.”
Deputies found no weapons in his motel room.
The family questions the basis for the deadly raid.
Lurry, who approved the warrant, was elected as a judge 15 months before Richardson’s shooting after a career as a public defender and prosecutor. She declined repeated requests for comment.
For years, Louisiana has been a leader in “e-warrants,” warrants that are processed electronically on computers, smartphones and other tablets. CloudGavel, the Baton Rouge software company used by the sheriff’s office, said its technology is used in nine states by more than 200 agencies, including police in Austin and New Orleans. The number of all types of warrants processed annually increased from 13,000 to almost 90,000 over the past six years. The company declined to say how many of those were no-knock warrants.
CloudGavel markets its software by emphasizing its efficiency, using the tag line “Serves justice. Saves time.” An information sheet on its website proclaimed: “The one that got away? Not this time. When officers use CloudGavel’s Electronic Warrant Solution, warrant processing can happen up to 90% faster.”
Around the time of Richardson’s death, CloudGavel touted that it took about 27 minutes from warrant submission to approval. Cavaliere and Lurry beat that by 16 minutes.
Casey Roussel, CloudGavel’s president and chief customer officer, said law enforcement likes the technology because it saves time and money. He also said that the software allows courts to gather more data about warrants.
“The technology is not giving them the ability to more easily get no-knock warrants,” he said. “We’re eliminating the drive to and from the judge. At the end of the day, whether it’s a paper warrant or a digital warrant, one hundred percent of the responsibility relies on the judge.”
But some criminal justice advocates worry that judicial scrutiny is being compromised for efficiency, said the Rev. Alexis Anderson, a member of the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison Reform Coalition. The organization sends volunteers to monitor bail hearings in Baton Rouge.
“While the technology certainly speeds up the process, what gets lost sometimes is the due process in that speed,” she said. “Because we’re assuming, quite frankly, that great thought is given to these warrants … and sometimes that’s not true.”
Richardson’s children, as well as Clouatre, have sued the West Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office over the raid. That case is pending.
Clouatre is facing felony charges of possession with intent to distribute drugs from that night at the motel. She has pleaded not guilty.
The warrant did not name Clouatre, who said she is haunted by the raid.
“To this day, I cry every day and I’m traumatized,” she said.
‘That was someone else’s job’
Houston Judge Gordon Marcum was watching television at home in his gated community on Jan. 28, 2019, when he learned about a deadly no-knock raid across town. Immediately, he knew that he had signed the search warrant.
Just hours before the raid on a house on Harding Street, Houston police officer Gerald Goines had requested Marcum approve a no-knock warrant, claiming a confidential informant purchased an unspecified quantity of heroin at the house in a low-income, largely Latino neighborhood in southeast Houston. The narcotics officer didn’t list the name of the suspected dealer, information that is not required.
Shortly before 5 p.m., members of Narcotics Squad 15 descended on the home of Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas, forcing open the front door and fatally shooting their pit bull. Officers shot and killed Tuttle and Nicholas in their living room.
Police claimed that Tuttle was armed with a .357-magnum revolver and shot first. Four officers, including Goines, were shot during the gun battle. One was permanently paralyzed.
Marcum said he could think only of the “pain and suffering” that reporters described on television. He said he was awestruck by images of the large number of officers surrounding the home.
Officers didn’t find any of the heroin that Goines had accused the couple of selling. Instead, police said they recovered about 1.5 grams of cocaine and 18 grams of marijuana.
Houston police investigated the deadly raid and found that Goines, who organized the raid, had lied on the affidavit — he later admitted to investigators that there was no confidential informant, the department said.
Goines and Felipe Gallegos, the officer accused of shooting Tuttle, were charged in state court with felony murder. Goines, who retired after the raid, has pleaded not guilty. His lawyer, Nicole DeBorde, said the charge was “unfortunate” and Goines would be “vindicated” in court. The charge against Gallegos, who also left the department, was later dismissed because of conduct by a prosecutor. An attorney for Gallegos said the former officer shot Tuttle in self-defense.
Goines is also charged in federal court with depriving the couple’s civil rights and with obstructing justice by falsifying records. Officer Steven Bryant was also charged with obstructing justice by falsifying records. Goines has pleaded not guilty, while Bryant has pleaded guilty.
In an interview with The Post, Marcum, an oil executive turned municipal judge, said he did not regret signing the search warrant for Harding Street because he never thought officers would lie on affidavits.
“Of all the years that I’ve signed them, I’ve never had a police officer ever proven that they had lied,” he said. “That’s the first one. … I was sorry that they felt like they had to.”
Several officers from Squad 15 obtained no-knock warrants from Marcum, records show.
Marcum, who typically handled jail arraignments, traffic cases and restaurant code violations, said that he and other judges played a vital role in approving no-knock requests.
“I’m the last guy before they break your door down,” Marcum said during an interview in his home, the only time he has spoken publicly about the case. “If I’m the guy who screwed that up, you’ve caused someone to lose their constitutional rights. So you want to be as sure as humanly possible that they’re going to the right place, and doing the right thing.”
The Post examined 221 search warrant requests from 2017 through 2019 that Marcum handled. Out of 93 requests by police for a no-knock warrant, Marcum approved 76. The outcome could not be determined in the other 17.
Of the no-knock warrants he approved, officers in most cases had cited guns as the justification. In cases in which court records were available, police recovered firearms about half the time.
Asked about his review process, Marcum said he did not take notes on the testimony from officers seeking the warrants. Officers file documents outlining the evidence they found in the raids, but those documents — known as search warrant “returns” — are not required to be reviewed by the judges who approved the warrant application.
“That was someone else’s job,” said Marcum, who retired the month after the raid.
The families of Tuttle and Nicholas have filed lawsuits against Houston police, accusing the officers of excessive force and unlawful search and seizure. John Nicholas, whose sister was killed in the raid, said Marcum failed.
“Did he really pay attention to back this up, or did he just sign his name?” said Nicholas, who died of a heart attack months after speaking with The Post.
Marcum wasn’t the only judge who signed off on no-knock warrants for Squad 15. The Post analyzed warrants that Goines and Bryant, his former partner, requested from at least eight other Harris County judges from 2006 to 2018.
Of the 184 search warrants requested by the two officers, 172 were approved as no-knock warrants, analysis shows. The officers cited concerns that the occupants might have access to guns as justification for the no-knocks in 147 of those searches. Police recovered firearms in nine of the raids — including one toy gun, according to documents filed in court.
The analysis also showed a pronounced racial pattern: In those 172 no-knock warrants, at least one of the suspects was Black in 169 cases — or 98 percent of the time, according to descriptions of the suspects in warrant applications. Marcum’s warrants had a similar pattern.
Marcum, who is White, said that was likely because of the precinct that Squad 15 covered, which included the southern part of Houston and many majority-Black and Hispanic neighborhoods, some of which have been plagued by drug trafficking.
“We had a lot of bad guys living on that side of town, and that’s where they lived, and that’s where they did their deal,” he said.
Goines, who requested most of the 184 warrants, declined to comment through his defense attorney. An attorney for Bryant did not respond to requests for comment.
In early 2019, Houston police announced plans to eliminate no-knock warrants without explicit permission from the chief, and assigned high-risk searches to a special squad. The department declined to comment.
Marcum said after the deadly raid, he no longer thinks no-knocks are worth the risk.
“I wouldn’t sign one, just because of the fact that there’s a possibility of so many officers getting hurt and killed,” Marcum said. “There’s no reason to put them in harm’s way.”
Iryna Merezhko at the Los Angeles pharmacy where she works. (photo: Grace Widyatmadja/NPR)
From Ukraine, she and Ivan traveled to Tijuana, Mexico. At the border crossing with San Diego, they asked U.S. border agents to let Ivan in on humanitarian grounds, something thousands of Ukrainians have done since the Biden administration said it would accept 100,000 refugees fleeing the war. Merezhko knew that because she was Ivan's aunt and not his mother, the agents might temporarily detain him.
And that's just what she says the agent who processed Ivan's request told them would happen: that he'd be held in detention for a day or two, before being reunited with his aunt.
"They said one day, maybe two," Merezhko said.
Seven days later, Merezhko has no idea where Ivan is being held. And despite a policy allowing children detained at the border to have contact with relatives at least twice a week, neither Merezhko nor any member of Ivan's family has heard from him. A day after she said goodbye to him at the border on April 8, Merezhko says she got a phone call from an official who told her it could take 30 days for Ivan to get out, and that she should wait for a call. But the official offered no other information.
"We know nothing," Merezhko said. "We don't even know if he's still in California."
Ivan's mother, Catarina, who stayed in Ukraine to support the war effort, now regrets having sent her son.
"If I knew this would happen, I would have kept him here in the war zone," Merezhko said her sister told her through tears during a phone call this week. "At least I would know where he is."
Ivan is not unlike thousands of other children from Central America, Afghanistan or elsewhere who've arrived at the border in recent years and months and requested temporary admission to the United States on humanitarian grounds.
Border agents are required by law to turn unaccompanied children who arrive at the border over to the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services. That includes children like Ivan, who arrive with family members who are not their parents. Government officials then house the children in a network of detention centers for minors as they determine whether the adult intending to care for them in the United States has permission from the child's parent and is otherwise qualified to do so.
Agency data indicate that as of December it was taking an average of 37 days for the government to vet these U.S. sponsors and release qualified children from detention. The length of Ivan's detention so far is still well below that average.
What has led Iryna Merezhko and her family to despair is not knowing where he is, and the feeling that the border agents who processed Ivan duped them into thinking he would be out quickly. Until now, she says, the Department of Health and Human Services has also not honored its promise – written into policy – that Ivan would get to contact family twice a week.
Ivan and his mother said a tearful goodbye in Ukraine early last week, before he and his aunt Iryna boarded a train to Poland and began a several-day journey across Europe to Mexico. All along the way, Ivan insisted on calling his mother several times a day to make sure she and his father — supporting Ukrainian troops on the front lines — were still alive.
His aunt Iryna has spent the last week dwelling on the anguish she imagines he must be feeling at not knowing whether his parents have been killed in the war. Merezhko, a pharmacist in Los Angeles, said she has been hanging by her phone waiting for a call from Ivan or a government official.
Ivan and his aunt spoke with NPR in Tijuana last week, at a shelter that has housed thousands of Ukrainians as they've waited their turn to present themselves at the U.S. border. He said he was excited about coming to California, but missed the family and friends he left behind. "My heart," he called them. His aunt was zealously guarding the thick stack of notarized documents that her sister Catarina had handed her to ease Ivan's entry into the United States.
Adrian Eng-Gastelum, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, declined to discuss specific cases out of privacy and security concerns. He also said the agency could not provide data about how many children have been detained since Ukrainians began arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border in March.
In a written statement, he said, "children have access to medical treatment, legal services, translation services, and mental and behavioral health counselors and are able to connect with family at least twice a week. Children also meet with a case manager at least weekly."
Cecilia Barreda, a spokeswoman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, also declined to answer questions about specific cases.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. (photo: Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty Images)
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) has been one of the biggest fundraisers for Republicans in the House. But to kick off 2022, she actually spent more than she took in.
About half of that loss is represented in fees to Donald Trump’s top Jan. 6 attorney and a security detail that protected Kyle Rittenhouse during his trial last year.
While Greene has always traded steep fees for slightly higher returns, she’s always managed to come out on top—until now.
Last quarter she sprung a hole in the bucket, as her campaign committee, Greene for Congress, spent about $1.38 million while taking in only $1.06 million in donations. Fundraising costs alone wiped out three-quarters of those receipts.
Greene, one of the top fundraisers in the House, has deployed expensive digital fundraising operations in the past, and reports have dinged her for it, pointing out that the fees give the lie to an inflated small-dollar contribution stream.
Last quarter, however, MAGAworld’s leading lady bet big on direct mail, sinking more than $400,000 into printing, postage, and associated expenses. When that money was added to consulting, list rental, and digital fees, Greene for Congress spent more than $735,000 on its fundraising efforts.
To make matters worse, the same day the campaign filed its new report, it also filed three amended versions of previous reports from last year, admitting that the committee had overstated contributions by more than $100,000. The campaign currently holds about $3 million in cash on hand, which represents a net gain of about $900,000 over the last 12 months.
Greene also spent big elsewhere this year, most specifically for personal security, racking up about $140,000 in expenses. Almost all of that went in three monthly payments to a Knoxville-based executive protection company called the KaJor Group, which also handled security for Kenosha shooter Kyle Rittenhouse during his trial last year.
For Greene, who prior to the 2020 election had received protection free of charge from members of the Oath Keepers anti-government militia group, this is an extraordinary surge in security costs.
Last year, it was mostly Democrats who took advantage of the Federal Election Commission’s post-insurrection ruling that elected officials can hire bodyguards with campaign funds. That year, Sens. Raphael Warnock, Jon Ossoff, and Mark Kelly shelled out hundreds of thousands of dollars for personal protection, while Greene for Congress reported protective expenses just north of $12,000, nearly half of it for an electronic security system. That’s less than 10 percent of what she paid the Kajor Group last quarter.
It’s not immediately clear why Greene hired the new firm. Asked about the expenses, which first appeared in late January, a campaign spokesperson told The Daily Beast, “I’m not going to get into details about her security due to the sensitive nature of it.”
The spokesperson did, however, cite an uptick in threats to the congresswoman, including the arrest last month of a New York man who had made threatening calls to Greene’s D.C. office.
“Our staff has reported over 20 threats to Capitol Police in the past week,” the spokesperson said in a text message, along with a link to Greene’s response to a controversial recent segment on Jimmy Kimmel Live.
The spokesperson added that Greene also received “a significant amount” of threats in January, surrounding the one-year anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Ironically enough, many of Greene’s own colleagues blame that attack partially on her rhetoric, which they say empowers violent elements of the right wing.
A few days after the Jan. 6 anniversary, Greene suggested using guns to defend against Democrats.
“Ultimately, the truth is it’s our Second Amendment rights, our right to bear arms, that protects Americans and gives us the ability to defend ourselves from a tyrannical government,” Greene told right-wing talk host Seb Gorka on Jan. 11. “And I hate to use this language, but Democrats, they’re exactly… they’re doing exactly what our Founders talked about when they gave us the precious rights that we have.”
Rita Katz, executive director of the SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks extremist groups, told The Hill that those comments carry weight.
“Some lawmakers are indeed a source of threats. Comments from figures like Marjorie Taylor Greene are regularly shared and converted into rallying cries for some segments of the far-right,” Katz said.
Greene appears to have extended her ties to Jan. 6 in more ways than one.
Three days after her Second Amendment remarks, the Greene campaign hired Trump legal adviser John Eastman, laying down a $10,000 retainer for his firm, the Constitutional Counsel Group, on Jan. 14.
Eastman, a conservative legal scholar who devised the plan to subvert the Electoral College count, was at Trump’s side on Jan. 6, and remains a central focus of the congressional investigation into the events surrounding the insurrection.
Greene currently faces a constitutional challenge to her candidacy for giving aid to Jan. 6 insurrectionists, and while a number of outside attorney applications remain under court seal, that lawsuit was filed in March, several weeks after Eastman was paid. Neither Greene nor her campaign appear in state court records in their home of Floyd County, GA.
Asked why the campaign had hired Eastman, the campaign provided a statement suggesting that the matter involved constitutional concerns, but did not elaborate further.
“Dr. Eastman is one of the leading constitutional attorneys in the country. When we need advice on significant constitutional issues, we have occasionally sought his counsel,” the statement said. “The particular issues for which we sought his advice are protected by attorney-client privilege, however.”
Sunday Song: Julian Lennon performs Imagine at the Global Citizen's social media rally, Stand Up For Ukraine.
Lyrics Julian Lennon, Imagine.
From the 1971 album, Imagine.
Written by, John Lennon and Yoko Ono.
Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people living for today
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace, you
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people sharing all the world, you
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will be as one
A pack of wolves in Yellowstone National Park are spotted from a wildlife tracking plane. (photo: Courtesy of Yellowstone National Park)
"This was the winter of my discontent," Yellowstone National Park senior wolf biologist Doug Smith says while driving over a washboarded dirt road near the park's northern border.
"The park line's right over here, and that's where a lot of the controversy occurred," he says, gesturing to the unmarked edge of the park just in front of us.
There's no wolf hunting inside the park itself, but when wolves set paw over the boundary into Montana, Wyoming and Idaho, they're fair game, at least during the hunting seasons that states are allowed to establish. This season, hunters killed 25 wolves — about 20% of the park's population. Smith says the wolf population varies throughout the year. Right now, he estimates the population is at something of a low point — likely numbering in the 80s.
Today, Smith's hoping to track a wolf that wears a radio collar. Over the course of his research team's 27 years studying the canines in Yellowstone, they've captured and collared more than 500 wolves — what Smith says is one of the largest wolf datasets in the world.
Hopping out of his car, he unfolds an antenna and begins to gesture it around, eyes on the distant hills. He thinks he hears a signal, but ... "I've radio-tracked so much in my life you get this thing called ghost beeps," he says. "You think you hear a beep and you don't."
Wolves were hunted to near-extinction as the country was colonized. The last pack of Yellowstone wolves was killed in 1926. They were reintroduced to the park in the mid-1990s, and along with mountain lions and grizzly bears, they've made a comeback.
"That's a really cool thing to say in this day and age when most environmental news is bad. Yellowstone is as good as it's ever been, and a big part of that is we've restored the ecosystem and we've done it with the toothy big carnivores," Smith says. "All of them."
Federal protections for wolves were dropped about a decade ago, and it became legal to hunt limited numbers of them. Now, saying they have come back too strong, Montana and Idaho changed hunting rules to reduce wolf populations in both states. Montana now allows night hunting, trap baiting and neck snares, among other measures. Idaho eliminated limits on how many wolves that hunters could kill. There, it's now legal to shoot them from ATVs and snowmobiles.
Suddenly, Smith gets a signal. Faint beeps grow louder.
"This wolf's around — how do ya like that?"
He says he's detecting a lone wolf. It's likely young, like most wolves in the park. And it's out of sight, but from the beeps he's getting, Smith says it's a mile, maybe a mile and a half in the distance.
As the number of wolf deaths climbed in December, Yellowstone Superintendent Cam Sholly wrote Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte asking him to suspend the hunting season. His request fell on deaf ears. Nearly a year before, Gianforte himself had killed a collared wolf from the park (legally, although he was cited for having failed to complete a required trapper education course). In a press conference last year, Gianforte said trapping is an important part of managing species.
"It was a tremendous honor to be able to harvest a wolf here in Montana," he said.
Among measures passed last year meant to increase wolf mortality in the state, Montana dropped limits on how many of the canines can be killed in certain areas bordering Yellowstone. The total number killed in those areas shot up from four or fewer a year over the last decade to 19 this season.
After an outcry from conservation groups, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is now evaluating whether Endangered Species Act protections should be returned to wolves in the Northern Rockies.
Trappers and hunters
"There's a lot of panic among people when there doesn't need to be," says Brian Stoner. He's a trapper and an organizer of the Montana Trappers' Association annual fur auction, where I met him. The event was about an hour north of Yellowstone, and pelts from coyotes, foxes, bobcats and more were streaming through the doors and piling up on long, fold-out tables. In the hours to come, fur will fill the fairground hall.
"I wouldn't be surprised if we had a wolf or two that showed up by tomorrow," he said.
As he walked me through the tables, he said putting a value on each pelt is as much an art as a science. He used a bobcat pelt as an example.
"You'll notice it has some spots in here kind of in the center of the belly, but it gets a little weakened down here," he said.
For Stoner, wildlife is livelihood. It's also a lot more than that. He said that trappers have a unique relationship with animals that lots of outsiders don't understand and that they would not support rules that would cause extinction. He said what motivates him is the love of the animals.
"While I do go out there with the intent of harvesting these animals and I know that I'm killing them, I'm removing them from the population, I also know the dynamics of these animals," he said. "I know that they're able to breed, able to replenish. The last thing I want to do is trap the last of anything. I want my kids, my grandkids, I want future generations to be able to do this."
When it comes to wolves, he said harvest numbers this year are right on par with years past. At least, he says, if you are looking at the state as a whole.
"The only thing that is changing is the fact that that the wolves that are in the Yellowstone region, they got harvested more so than they have in the past," he said.
While this was a record-setting year for Yellowstone-area wolf deaths, the number of wolves killed in Montana overall was the lowest it's been since 2017, at 273 statewide.
Stoner said wolf populations bounce back quickly and the state sets guidelines based on science and provides backstops if the hunt gets out of hand. This season, Montana closed wolf hunting in the region around Yellowstone in February, about a month ahead of schedule.
So, concerns about too many Yellowstone are wolves being killed? "I think it's a lot of hoopla about nothing," he said.
Science in the park
Back near the park boundary, a tiny airplane about the size of a motorcycle with wings glides onto a small runway, while elk mill about nearby. That plane — a wildlife tracking aircraft called a Super Cub, meant to fly low and slow — is part of the Yellowstone Wolf Project, research in the park that's been going on for more than 25 years.
"That's the beauty of the Wolf Project, is that we've been getting these counts for over 25 years now, which is longer than I've been alive," says Maddy Jackson, a research technician.
The research focuses on what, when and where wolves are eating, as in bison, elk and deer. Most days, Jackson is on the "cluster crew" that hike out to areas where wolves are spending a lot of time to document the animals they're killing and scavenging. But today, she'll be in the plane, tracking the wolves from the air.
Jackson and the pilot fold themselves into the plane and take off. For the next three hours, they'll zigzag over the park, covering about 300 miles. They hope to see somewhere in the order of 60 wolves.
Yellowstone biologist Doug Smith, who leads the project, says wolf populations do recover fast, and this year's hunt doesn't mean the park's wolves are going extinct. But this many wolf deaths also disrupts the animals' deeper, social dynamics.
"This winter, what we experienced was catastrophic mortality," Smith says.
Catastrophic, he says, because wildlife research as long-running as the wolf project is rare but vital to understanding ecosystems. Yellowstone is a natural laboratory for studying wolves. He said there are lots of other studies that focus on wolf populations that are impacted by hunters. But here in Yellowstone, the population is unique in that it's both easy to observe and very nearly unimpacted by hunters and humans. Or at least, that had been the case.
"Our claim to fame with Wolf Research was we have the best data in the world in an unexploited-by-humans population," Smith says. "We don't have that now. And that's, I think, a shame and a tragedy."
In addition to tracking wolves by plane and with the cluster crew, Smith's team also has one other way of gathering data. He parks in a pullout and introduces me to Taylor Bland and Jeremy Sunder Raj, members of the ground crew. Like private eyes on a marathon stakeout, they're out from dawn to dusk, watching wolves from the road.
"We're all pretty exhausted, but we get to see pretty good behavior, so makes for good watching," Bland says.
The two take out spotting scopes and angle them toward a patch of trees in the distance. They scan the sage-dominated landscape for signs of movement and life. But no luck.
When they do get wolves in their sights, Bland, Sunder Raj and other members of the ground crew are busy interacting with tourists — who spend more than an estimated $30 million a year wolf-watching around Yellowstone — and also documenting what they see. They draw maps and record when the wolves are traveling, hunting, sleeping and more. Sunder Raj says all of the flights, the cluster crews and the documenting they're doing on the ground "has basically allowed us to learn basically more in the last 27 years about wolves than almost all of the other studies leading up to that."
The baseline data they gather can help answer questions about how to protect livestock from wolves and game animals that both draw tourists and provide food for local hunters.
"That's the flashpoint for wolves almost everywhere," Doug Smith says. "If we know kind of the base rates of what wolves do to elk, bison and deer, managers outside of national parks can use that to help make decisions about what they're doing."
Smith says the very thing that makes Yellowstone wolves unique makes them particularly vulnerable to hunting. Used to seeing humans lining the roads of the park, they don't exactly hide from people. He says one wolf this year was shot just 40 meters, or 130 feet, from the park line.
Smith said wolf hunting seasons like this one can't become annual events; hunting can help build tolerance for wolves. But he said they also need places like Yellowstone.
"So wolves can be wolves and nature can be nature."
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