[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.?

[Petronski]

Reminds me of life in the Soviet Union, except here, someone's getting sued.

[Fixit]

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.

[crz]

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.

[TN4Liberty]

Buying school supplies?

[stainlessbanner]

What are 425 kids doing at a k-mart parking lot after midnight?!

[joesnuffy]

Rosie told her to shop there and buy Martha Steward brand made in china by little ole men with one kidney houseware

[FITZ]

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.

[JoeSixPack1]

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.

[hopespringseternal]

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.

[Damocles]

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.

[genefromjersey]

Quite obviously, if they were on the lot at the time they were arrested, they were trespassing.QED.

[Cap'n Crunch]

Good work Houston PD!

[Between the Lines]

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.

[Rum Tum Tugger]

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.

[Illbay]

Sorry, but my momma always told me "there ain't a blame thing you can do running around after midnight that ain't trouble."

[Byron_the_Aussie]

..arrested about 425 people for criminal trespassing, a misdemeanor...

How can you 'criminally trespass', in the parking lot of a department store that's open 24 hours a day?

[willieroe]

Strange that the above story would drone on and on without a mention of juvenile curfew violation.

[Godel]

"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."

A very interesting remark about equal treatment. Perhaps the offending youths were mostly of a particular race, and the cops just arrested everyone in the vicinity to avoid any accusations of bias. That's the only way they can avoid being branded racist by taking in minority criminals, need to bring in a few innocent kids to even out the quotas.

[George Frm Br00klyn Park]

Guys, Draco LIVES! Peace and love, George.

[Flyer]

Listening to the discussion on the Jon Matthews show (KSEV 700), it seems that this has been an ongoing problem. People from the neighborhood claim that the gathering often lasts until 3 - 4:00 a.m. Police do run them off, and they return later.

That said, I think it was handled poorly. I think seeing a few of your friends riding off in the back of a police car, for a few weekends in a row, would encourage most of them to go elsewhere. This mass "equal treatment" arrest was a bad idea.

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