OFFICERS ACCUSED OF FALSE ALIBI

Woman Never Noticed Officers, Detective Said

Two Corpus Christi police officers stole money from a motorist and tried to
cover it up with an alibi, a police internal affairs investigator testified
in court Monday.

Officers Raul Natividad and Thomas Hudgins, both 33, are charged with
third-degree felony theft for allegedly stealing $5,000 cash from Enrique
"Henry" Rivera, who admitted on the witness stand that he was a drug
dealer. The officers have pleaded innocent.

Natividad and Hudgins were fired from the Corpus Christi Police Department
in November. They have appealed and are on suspension without pay pending
arbitration.

Natividad and Hudgins told police dispatchers they would respond to a call
about a suspicious person in the 2700 block of Willard Street during the
early hours of July 14, 1999, but the officers instead stopped Rivera on
Lantana Street - far from Willard Street - prosecutor Mark Stolley has said.

Michael Trimyer, an internal affairs investigator with the Corpus Christi
Police Department, testified Monday that he believed the officers
volunteered to check out the suspicious-person report as an alibi for the
theft.

After Rivera reported the theft, Trimyer phoned the woman who had reported
a suspicious person walking near her home. Stolley played a tape of the
conversation for jurors Monday.

On the tape, the woman said a police car may have stopped by her
neighborhood but that she looked out her windows and never saw one. A
dispatcher testified earlier that the caller didn't want officers to come
to her door.

Police investigating Rivera's theft allegation never checked for
fingerprints on the officers' patrol car or on Rivera's truck, Trimyer said
under questioning by Natividad's defense attorney, Terry Shamsie.

"In retrospect, it would have been a good idea," Trimyer said.

John Aguirre, 27, testified last week that Natividad and Hudgins talked to
him not long after the theft and admitted they stole the money from Rivera.
Aguirre, who owned an auto accessories business at the time, said he often
socialized with a group of police officers.