Raid on Kmart lot leaves shock, anger( America PoliceState in the Making)

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.

Steve Campbell / Chronicle Soneary Sy is overcome with emotion outside the police station as she waits for her son to be released. Sy said she waited all night for her 17-year-old son, a straight-A student, to come home.

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.

Steve Campbell / Chronicle Brandi Ratliff, left, and Kyesa Scott, both 18, comfort each other after being released from police custody. "It was traumatic," Ratliff said of her arrest in a Kmart parking lot and a night in jail.

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.

"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."

Armed policemen may have made them think twice about their criminal intentions as compared to the feckless private security personnel that were hired.

HOW TO WIN AN ARGUMENT
FILMSTRIP SERIES #127/AB-4

NARRATOR: The key to successfully promoting one's point of view in any debate is ridicule. By successfully ridiculing the point of view of one's opponent, one may cause the reader of such a discussion to come to accept your own position by default.

One way to do this is by the fanciful exaggeration of the opponent's position. In this case, the fanciful exaggeration is cleverly employed as part of a false dichotomy - a twofer! The words "armed guards" have been employed by your opponent - how to respond?

Simple! Just extend and exaggerate that position to some ridiculous extreme, and then tar your opponent with that brush! Make it sound as though your opponent advocates shooting teens on sight - this has the effect of ridiculing your opponent, and attempts to force him into an extreme position by denying the existence of any middle ground. Imply that either teens must be permitted to act in any criminal manner they see fit, or they must be shot down in the streets like wild dogs.

Be sure to practice this technique - the key to successful use of this tactic is practice, practice, practice! And next time, we'll explore the techniques of the simple ad hominem attack - how to label your opponent in such a way as to make people stop listening to him. 'Till then, bye for now!

Raid went to 'hell in a handbasket'

Officers say Kmart bust was flubbed

Houston Police Chief C.O. Bradford ordered an investigation Monday into the weekend arrests of hundreds of people gathered peacefully at a westside parking lot by police who were assigned to stop illegal drag racing.

Officers on the scene called the arrests "utterly, utterly senseless" on Monday, and said the captain in charge, Mark Aguirre, ordered them to round up everyone who was outside the 24-hour Kmart Super Center or eating at the Sonic Drive-In next door.

The operation had been weeks in planning and involved dozens of officers. But officers involved said that when no drag racers were found, they were ordered to arrest the 278 people there.

Police on Sunday said 425 people were arrested, but Monday revised the count. Most were charged with criminal trespass.

"I couldn't believe we were being told to arrest all those kids. It was just utterly, utterly senseless," said one officer involved, who violated department policy by discussing the arrests and spoke on condition of anonymity.

"Captain Aguirre was put in charge, and it went to hell in a handbasket," said a police supervisor who was at the scene, also violating department policy and requesting anonymity.

Also taken into custody were 42 juveniles who were cited for violation of the city's midnight curfew. Thirty of the juveniles also were charged with criminal trespass.

Bradford issued a statement late Monday saying he had begun an inquiry into the arrests, including who was in charge and what instructions were given to the officers.

Two police supervisors said Monday that Aguirre, captain of the South Central Patrol Division, had taken over the operation after a dispute with the assigned leader at a staff meeting. Both blamed Aguirre.

"That operation had been planned for weeks," one of the supervisors said. "It was not planned with the intent to arrest everyone in sight. It was to arrest drag racers."

Both police supervisors said the Sunday operation began under the supervision of Westside Patrol Capt. John Mokwa, in whose area it took place.

But when Aguirre angered Mokwa during a command staff meeting by insisting he knew how the operation should be conducted, he and Mokwa got the permission of an assistant chief for Aguirre to take over, the supervisors said.

Neither Aguirre nor Mokwa returned calls Monday.

The supervisors said the operation was part of a series of recent police efforts to stop illegal drag racing.

During a June 15 raid, police found more than 300 cars gathered in the 7100 block of Business Park Drive, where eight people were arrested for reckless driving and three for public intoxication. Police also issued 32 traffic tickets and cited 16 juveniles for breaking the city's curfew.

On June 22, another raid in the 7000 block of Westheimer to Texas 6 netted five arrests for reckless driving and 65 tickets.

Bradford's statement also said he plans to investigate why police arrested the people gathered in the parking lots instead of issuing citations as in the previous operations.

The Sunday raid "was a complete waste of weeks of work and a huge amount of manpower," said one of the supervisors.

"There are all those kids now, who have a criminal record, and don't deserve it," said the other supervisor.

Hundreds of young people gather in the parking lots of the Kmart and adjacent Sonic on weekend nights.

Those businesses and others in the area, as well as nearby residents, have in the past complained about the noise and litter, police said.

Police were interested in the spot's role as a race staging area, where young drivers admire one another's vehicles, then go to other nearby locations to race, said one of the supervisors.

The two supervisors said police had "scout cars" and undercover officers working surveillance at the gathering spot for weeks in preparation for Sunday's raid.

"But we got out there, and no one was racing," said one of the supervisors. "So Aguirre just said, `Arrest them all for trespass.'

"It was like, `Kill them all and let God sort them out,' " said the other supervisor. "I guess we're just lucky he didn't order us to fire warning shots into the crowd or anything."

Both supervisors said many of the people arrested were not in cars. Many were eating food from the Sonic, which was open until 2 a.m., or had been shopping at Kmart.

Monday, Kmart corporate spokeswoman Susan Dennis acknowledged the store has had complaints about the weekend night crowds.

"Our first concern is the safety of our customers and associates," Dennis said. "As for the action taken, that was the police. There was no directive from Kmart."

A woman who answered the phone at the Sonic on Monday said no one there wished to speak to the news media.

HPD's internal affairs division was flooded Monday with people filing complaints over their arrests.

"I was eating ice cream from the Sonic when I was arrested," 19-year-old Emily Demmler said Monday. She and several friends, all of whom were arrested, met at Demmler's house Monday to go file IAD complaints.

An IAD officer said many of those who filed complaints Monday were discussing lawsuits over the incident.

"I don't feel safe anywhere now," Demmler said of the experience. "It was really wrong, what they did."

Many of those arrested Sunday pleaded guilty in order to get out of jail quicker and go about the business of retrieving their cars, all of which were towed away.

Martin DeLeon, an HPD spokesman, said the tow fee is $103 and the storage fee averages about $15 a day, but some auto-storage facilities can charge more.

Ronald Beylotte, chief prosecutor for the city attorney's office, said the cases that are set for trial will probably be scheduled in four to six weeks.

Aguirre has run afoul of department policy many times in his 20 years with HPD.

The most recent, an allegation that Aguirre used foul and threatening language to his subordinates, garnered the captain a written reprimand from Bradford, which was overturned by an arbitrator.

That incident also resulted in an investigation of perjury allegations against Bradford, who testified at Aguirre's hearing that he doesn't use profanity to his subordinates.

Bradford later was contradicted by an assistant chief, who testified that Bradford had once called him a quite profane name

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