Posted on 08/19/2002 11:53:25 AM PDT by USA21
Raid on Kmart lot leaves shock, anger
Teenagers, parents question arrests of 425 outside store
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.
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.
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.
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."
What about the folks eating at the Sonic?
If I'm eating at Sonic at 12:30am following a long day of National Guard Drill and cops show up and order me into the parking lot of the Kmart next door with no arrest and no probable cause, I'm going to have a problem with it.
Wouldn't you?
Appearantly K-Mart and Sonic can, otherwise they wouldn't be open 24 hours a day.
EBUCK
This girl and her boyfriend spent the night in jail for simply having been at the club at the time. The police were insulting and dismissive.
This is, I believe, a result of the years' of cries of racial profiling. Now, everyone gets arrested. Next step -- no enforcement at all.
It's the bureaucrats who sent them there who are the primary problem.
You know, I think I read about that happening in the Soviet Union under Stalin once, or was that Cambodia under Pol Pot?
They're almost as bad as the Harris County Keystone cops.
When did acceptable law enforcement practice come to include eounding up and arresting everyone in sight, regardless of any evidence of wrongdoing?
It is amazing how people that enjoy the greatest amount of personal freedom in the history of mankind are crying about a so called police state. Come on man. Get a grip!
Why is it I can never see my typos in the preview pane, yet they are always glaringly obvious once posted?
The article fails to mention what time was stamped on the reciept. If the receipt is stamped 11:29, and they are still in the parking lot and hour later, they are loitering.
You people need to get a grip!
We have to have laws. They have to be enforced.
Your response is typical of many teenagers (and adults). No consequences. No rules.
Life doesn't work that way.
A completely unsubstantiated claim. Most police in America do a great job with very little support from whiners like you.
Did the reporter bother to find this 10 year old girl or her father to verify the story?
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