Posted on 06/12/2003 8:08:01 AM PDT by Dog Gone
A Houston police sergeant told a jury Wednesday he once admired former Capt. Mark Aguirre but lost respect for him after a raid last year led to the arrests of hundreds of innocent bystanders.
"He was a mentor of mine," Sgt. John Zitzmann said during questioning by the defense. "This whole event completely turned me against him."
Zitzmann, who began testifying Tuesday, was the last witness for the prosecution, which rested its case against Aguirre on Wednesday.
Aguirre is being tried on five charges of official oppression in connection with the Aug. 18 raid at a westside Kmart and Sonic Drive-In in the 8400 block of Westheimer. Police under Aguirre's supervision arrested 278 people, but all charges were later dropped.
After the raid sparked a public furor and led to a police internal investigation, Zitzmann said, Aguirre tried to make him talk about the in-house probe, a violation of department policy.
Zitzmann said Aguirre wanted to know what questions Zitzmann was being asked, then offered to write the answers for the probe. Zitzmann said he did not comply with Aguirre's request. Instead, he called a union lawyer and reported the incident.
"It's my opinion that, because he wasn't getting the support he was expecting, he was very concerned with his career," Zitzmann said.
Aguirre was fired after the internal investigation revealed he violated several departmental policies. Former Sgt. Ken Wenzel, who helped orchestrate the raid, resigned and faces criminal charges. Among the rank and file, 32 officers and supervisors, including Zitzmann, were disciplined.
Zitzmann testified Tuesday that he felt "duped" by Aguirre. The raid was supposed to target illegal street racing, but the focus shifted to trespassers just a few days before the arrests. Zitzmann said some of the officers questioned the change but were assured by Aguirre and Wenzel that they had researched the law.
The kinds of arrests the officers were making were for trespass violators who had been warned to leave the property. But none of the officers issued verbal warnings to anyone because they were told that no-trespassing signs Aguirre had ordered posted at the scene would be sufficient.
Prosecutors Tommy LaFon and Vic Wisner have argued the signs should have been posted at every entrance to the shopping center, not just a few. They also argued that there were not enough officers at the scene to check if the people arrested had done anything wrong.
Defense attorney Terry Yates began his case Wednesday with a captain who testified that Aguirre suggested the raid after a meeting with Police Chief C.O. Bradford last spring.
"Aguirre made a recommendation that we make a mass arrest, tow vehicles and take it out of their pockets," Capt. J.P. Mokwa said. "The chief praised it."
Mokwa said that, although the raid was taking place in his patrol area, Aguirre made clear to him that he was to have no role in it.
Other police officers who testified for the defense said Aguirre acted in good faith.
Bradford is expected to be called as a hostile witness by the defense before the case wraps up.
Having cops mass arrest citizens and plunder them is, of course, the reason citizens establish and fund a police force...
Prosecutors Tommy LaFon and Vic Wisner have argued the signs should have been posted at every entrance to the shopping center, not just a few. They also argued that there were not enough officers at the scene to check if the people arrested had done anything wrong.
I had wondered about that.
They must have a different way of doing things there. Here, the property owner makes a request of the city and gets signs to post himself. They usually say something along the lines of “The right to pass is granted pursuant to (whatever section).”
The “right to pass” essentially allows you to be physically on the property. You are to be doing customer/business/maintenance-type things. You can park there while you shop. You can park there while returning items. You can enter from Oak street, park, shop, then exit via Pine street. Etc, etc.
But you can’t just park and talk and smoke cigarettes. And you can’t cut through the lot to avoid intersections. You also can’t sit out in the lot at midnight drinking beer and socializing with friends.
The signs here are typically placed on every other light pole in the lot. They serve as notice – no further verbal warning is required. In fact, I’m not sure it’s required that they actually be posted at all.
It's not even clear that they were posted prior to the raid, although it's possible.
The police here planned (and did) arrest people on private property who were not unwelcome visitors.
The sign said something like "customers only". Does anyone have a link to the image that was posted last August?
That’s what is weird – or part of it. I can’t imagine it.
First, the police ordered WHO to post them? Here they have city maintenance crews that do things like that, but only at the library or city hall or city parks. They don’t just run around posting signs. And they don’t take marching orders from the police department anyway. I can’t imagine who the police would “order” to post them.
I certainly can’t imagine a patrolman (that would probably be one of the few people they could “order” to do anything) running around with a pry bar and a post-hole digger and a trunk full of signs. They must do things differently there.
The other part is that I’d bet someone raised hell with them prior to the big raid. Maybe a shop that leases space there, maybe the actual property owner, maybe a property management company, maybe neighbors, maybe some unidentified customer, possibly the spouse of one of the police got harassed there, who knows… but I can’t imagine why they’d suddenly and randomly decide to crack down there. Maybe some off-duty cop working security there or something. I just can’t believe that they flipped a coin and chose that location.
Well, that would be slightly less ambiguous. Now my only question, as a customer, would be whether I have to leave the rest of my passengers, who don't plan to order anything, out on the sidewalk. Also, once I have purchased my soda and become a "customer," can I now stay all night?
I still think that if you're gonna be open all night with a high-volume business, you pretty much need to hire a $10.00/hour security guard to prevent unwanted folks from hanging around. Then, they can call the police when someone refuses to leave after being warned, and sign a complaint.
The police officers themselves posted the signs without the knowledge, much less permission, of the owners of the parking lot. The owners had not asked for this raid, and they had not complained to the police about the crowd.
Captain Aguirre took it upon himself to invent a crime for which he could arrest everyone in the parking lot, whether or not they were part of the usual crowd that was assembling there on weekends.
It was a stunning display of abuse of police power, and I still find it fascinating today that this incident happened. The cops actually pulled out their guns to arrest people sitting in their cars at a Sonic drive-in which was open for business.
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