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RAID ON KMART PARKING LOT (HOUSTON) LEAVES SHOCK, ANGER
The Houston Chronicle ^ | 19 August 2002 | Ron Nissimov

Posted on 08/19/2002 4:58:54 AM PDT by MeneMeneTekelUpharsin

A crowd of angry teenagers and their parents accused police Sunday of arresting many innocent bystanders during an overnight raid on a west Houston parking lot where youths apparently congregate. Scores of Houston police officers swarmed onto the Kmart parking lot in the 8400 block of Westheimer about 12:30 a.m. Sunday and arrested about 425 people for criminal trespassing, a misdemeanor.

Houston Police Department spokesman Martin DeLeon said many cars were towed. DeLeon said business owners have been complaining about youths gathering on their parking lots on weekend nights and causing a commotion. DeLeon said he did not have more details about the incident because the two captains in charge of the raid, M.A. Aguirre and J.P. Mokwa, were sleeping Sunday after working all night.

The Kmart store is open 24 hours a day, and many of the people at the HPD station at 61 Reisner said Sunday that they had simply been shopping or eating at a Sonic drive-in restaurant that adjoins the discount store's parking lot when they were arrested. Kmart and Sonic supervisors referred all questions to their corporate headquarters, which were not open Sunday.

"We went to use the restroom at Kmart and to buy a Scrunchi (hair band), and when we came back to our car, cops were coming in (the parking lot) and they tied our hands," said Brandi Ratliff, 18, who said she was a straight-A student at Waller High School and never had any problems with the law. Ratliff said that even though she and two friends told police they had just come out of the Kmart, all three were arrested and spent the night in jail.

"It was traumatic," said a tearful Ratliff on Sunday morning after her parents drove from Stafford to pay her $300 bail at the downtown city jail. "It was sick where they were holding us. A prostitute was fighting with another woman. The food they served was food you would serve to a dog, not a human."

Ratliff and her two friends, Kris Karsteter, 21, and Kyesa Scott, 18, all had pink marks on their wrists from where they said police had tied plastic handcuffs too tightly. Scott said she didn't have the money to pay bail and so she pleaded guilty to avoid spending another night in jail. Emily Demmler, 19, said: "All I was doing was eating ice cream."

Demmler said the only trouble she'd previously had with authorities was being called into the principal's office twice in elementary school for gossiping. She said she pulled her car into the Sonic lot shortly after midnight so she and her two friends could get some ice cream after a night of karaoke. After about five minutes, police "just swarmed," Demmler said.

"We thought we were in the middle of a drug bust, and we thought, `We're cool; we're not doing anything wrong,' " said Demmler, a part-time lifeguard at the Jewish Community Center who is starting college this fall at the University of Houston. Instead, all the patrons at the Sonic were ordered by police to march to the Kmart lot, where they joined throngs of other people who were being arrested, she said.

"My purse and my friend's purse were still in the car ... but the cop wouldn't let me get them," said Demmler, whose mother eventually recovered her car and both purses. "We asked police why we were being arrested, and they said, `Everybody is receiving equal treatment from the Houston Police Department tonight.' It didn't matter what you were doing; they arrested you."

Demmler said many youths appearing to be 13 or 14 were arrested and taken to juvenile detention facilities, adding, "They even arrested a 10-year-old girl who was having dinner with her father and took her to juvenile detention. "She got separated from her father and I asked her how old she was, and she told me she was 10," Demmler said. "She was dazed."

In a phone interview, Demmler claimed to have "huge marks on my arms" from tight handcuffs. Leanne Williams said her 19-year-old son called her from jail and told her he showed police a receipt for bottled water from Kmart, but he was still arrested. She said her son called her five times from the downtown jail, but police still couldn't locate him at 11 a.m. because his paperwork had been delayed.

"I gotta spend my Sunday at the jail searching for my son they can't find," said her husband, Jerome Williams. Soneary Sy didn't know her 17-year-old son, a straight-A student, was arrested until he called her at 6 a.m. "I didn't sleep all night waiting for my son to come home" said a sobbing Sy, a Cambodian immigrant who moved to Houston 22 years ago. "He tried to go to Kmart and as soon as he got to Kmart he was arrested."


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: freetrade; geopolitics; govwatch; kmart; kmartraid; loiters; nwo; parkinglot; raid; wodlist
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What is the straight-A student from Waller High School (Northwest of Houston) doing at the K-Mart parking lot at 12:30 a.m.?
1 posted on 08/19/2002 4:58:55 AM PDT by MeneMeneTekelUpharsin
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To: MeneMeneTekelUpharsin
Reminds me of life in the Soviet Union, except here, someone's getting sued.
2 posted on 08/19/2002 5:03:12 AM PDT by Petronski
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To: MeneMeneTekelUpharsin
Brandi Ratliff, 18, who said she was a straight-A student at Waller High School and never had any problems with the law.

She's 18 years old.

She can be anywhere she chooses, so long as she is still in the United States of America.

3 posted on 08/19/2002 5:04:32 AM PDT by Fixit
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To: MeneMeneTekelUpharsin
I agree! But for the benefit of the doubt...why did they not split them up and tell them to get home? Again, for the benefit of the doubt, I would imagine they have been having problems with kids hanging around there and raising hell at all hours of the night. But arresting them was a little much...arrresting them and calling their parents to come down and get them would have been about right. More to this story than whats been reported I bet.
4 posted on 08/19/2002 5:05:42 AM PDT by crz
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To: MeneMeneTekelUpharsin
Buying school supplies?
5 posted on 08/19/2002 5:06:25 AM PDT by TN4Liberty
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To: TN4Liberty
if that had happened here in good ol' rottenchester ny, they would just close down the kmart because of the "nuisance"laws on the books.
6 posted on 08/19/2002 5:09:31 AM PDT by bandlength
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To: MeneMeneTekelUpharsin
What are 425 kids doing at a k-mart parking lot after midnight?!
7 posted on 08/19/2002 5:11:07 AM PDT by stainlessbanner
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To: MeneMeneTekelUpharsin
Rosie told her to shop there and buy Martha Steward brand made in china by little ole men with one kidney houseware
8 posted on 08/19/2002 5:12:42 AM PDT by joesnuffy
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To: MeneMeneTekelUpharsin
I guess if they were on private property and the owner didn't want them there, something had to be done. It's a weird story because it has honor students and 10 year olds having dinner with their dad at 12:30 am.
9 posted on 08/19/2002 5:15:18 AM PDT by FITZ
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To: MeneMeneTekelUpharsin
Shopping centers across the country are late-night gathering places for the "too young to drink, but old enough to drive" crowd. It's been the acceptable place for decades. But with a # as large as 450 teens it was probably too much for the manager to accept so he turned the local gestapo loose on them. It seems they were more than happy to act on his request.
10 posted on 08/19/2002 5:15:27 AM PDT by JoeSixPack1
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To: MeneMeneTekelUpharsin
A lot of these parents ought to be kicked in the 'nads for letting their school age kids stay out that late the night before the first day of school.

Having said that, this sounds like the work of Houston's (not) finest. I remember the first time I met a Houston cop. He had known me for thirty seconds before he started bragging (lying) about all the people he had killed. I do think there are more serious problems than teenagers out too late to tend to in Houston.

K-mart must be trying to go out of business. Having your shoppers arrested is NOT the best way to drum up business.

11 posted on 08/19/2002 5:15:37 AM PDT by hopespringseternal
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To: MeneMeneTekelUpharsin
I think a better question is why are police ARRESTING a freakin' 10 year old!! What the #$%^ is the matter with their reasoning.

That particular case could get ugly for the PD.

12 posted on 08/19/2002 5:17:40 AM PDT by Damocles
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To: stainlessbanner
What are 425 kids doing at a k-mart parking lot after midnight?!

Ever since release of "The Fast and the Furious," kids have been buying up old Honda Civics and hang all sorts of gaudy chrome wings and neon lights on them, then hanging out after dark in parking lots. They are known in some circles as 'ricers' because they are more interested in making their Asian cars LOOK fast, rather than modifying them so they actually GO fast.

Without photos, it's impossible to know for sure. However, it sounds to me like these kids were ricers.

13 posted on 08/19/2002 5:17:54 AM PDT by Petronski
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To: Fixit
You are right except the Kmart parking lot is private property. Obviously they had complained to the police about the gathering of young people and the police responded. Trespassing is a crime and Kmart was asserting its property rights.
14 posted on 08/19/2002 5:21:41 AM PDT by Former Proud Canadian
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To: MeneMeneTekelUpharsin
Quite obviously, if they were on the lot at the time they were arrested, they were trespassing.QED.
15 posted on 08/19/2002 5:21:59 AM PDT by genefromjersey
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To: MeneMeneTekelUpharsin
Good work Houston PD!
16 posted on 08/19/2002 5:22:33 AM PDT by Cap'n Crunch
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To: MeneMeneTekelUpharsin
This sounds like an ongoing war between Kmart and Sonic to me. Kmart was tired of the Sonic crowd using it's parking lot for fun and games. Here (South Carolina) the police would not "raid" a parking lot of an open business just to clear it of undesirables because the business is open all night the police have no authority to remove "trespassers". Although they would come to any disturbances created by such a gathering. Instead they would inform the store that if they didn't want people congregating in the lot to barricade the parts of the lot furthest from the business as many businesses here now do. A little common sense goes a long way.
17 posted on 08/19/2002 5:29:07 AM PDT by Between the Lines
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To: MeneMeneTekelUpharsin
What is the straight-A student from Waller High School (Northwest of Houston) doing at the K-Mart parking lot at 12:30 a.m.?

I realize that you old farts from Podunksville think 12:30 a.m. Sunday (aka Saturday night) is late and way past your bed time, but the girl is 18 and it's not late.

18 posted on 08/19/2002 5:30:14 AM PDT by Rum Tum Tugger
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Comment #19 Removed by Moderator

Comment #20 Removed by Moderator


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