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."
I'm suprised from this thread (and the previous one) the number of people that can't comprehend this side of the story. These crowds do real damage to the businesses by driving away customers (in the case of the Sonic, some guy who has probably invested his life savings into a Sonic franchise was probably watching everything he had go down the drain.)
It will be interesting to see more coverage on this. The original story seem poorly researched (very little fact checking) and it seems very biased. All the kids are "straight A" students, or they were a customer. There were not 425 straight A all shopping at K-Mart.
Yeah. You can't travel by air or train without papers. Wherever you drive, you have to go through checkpoints and searches done in the name of public safety. Also, its illegal for citizens, especially the young ones, to congregate in large numbers. Of course, none of that stuff could ever happen here in America.
The opposite of the Police State is the Criminal State (example: NYC, pre-Giuliani)
Papers? You mean like a drivers license? Yea, that's tough, JUST like the good ole USSR.
Wherever you drive, you have to go through checkpoints and searches done in the name of public safety.
Wherever you drive? What are you talking about? I've never even SEEN a "checkpoint", let alone been through one. Try and be at least a little accurate here.
Also, its illegal for citizens, especially the young ones, to congregate in large numbers.
So if I want to have a party on your law, I can? And you can't do a thing about it? Cool, I'll keep that in mind.
Funny, I just drove by a local park where some group was having a get together, and noone was bothering them
Do you prefer those wonderful countries where the term "private property" has no meaning?
Police state? You're going to have to do better than that.
They're asking for multiple forms of ID now. And, as of last year, paying for a train ticket with cash now requires ID. If that's OK with you, fine.
"I've never even SEEN a "checkpoint", let alone been through one."
It started with "Sobriety Checkpoints," moved on to "Seatbelt Checkpoints," and now we have "Child Safety Checkpoints." If you live in NJ, chances are you've been stopped for at least one of these.
"Funny, I just drove by a local park where some group was having a get together, and noone was bothering them
In Philadelphia and most other cities, groups over a certain size require a police permit for such picnics.
No, we ain't the USSR, but it would be a hard sell to claim we're moving in the direction of more freedom rather than less.
Self appointed posting police bore me to tears. Why do you feel the need to boss other people around? You may be aware of everything that is ever posted on FR but some of us miss things. Is it too much to ask for you to leave us alone?
They were having National Honor Society meeting at Sonic...and suddenly, for no reason at all, right in the middle of the Awards ceremony ( which was running late because everyone had gotten into an intense debate on existentialist merits of 'scrunchies' as a generational protest prop )....the cops showed up, and like, you know, just busted everybody for just breathing air.
For heavens sake, grow up. Jim has asked us time and time again to do a search to see if something has already been posted.
The reason I posted was because maybe, just maybe someone might want to see what others have said about the article in the other post.
Who died and made you king? If it doesn't worry you that people are arrested for not being at home on a Saturday night then I have to say that you might be happier in Cuba or North Korea.
A civilized police force would respond to a large group of loiterers by simply dispersing them. This "mass arrest" thing is a very ugly sign of the times. To risk scooping up paying customers of the local businesses does more harm than good to the community as a whole.
;) ;) ;)
You are kidding right? Any fast food restarant owner would kill to have those kinds of crowds at 12:30 at night. I can see the k-mart wanting to get rid of them and perhaps the other business's which were all probably closed at that hour. So they were not driving away customers but may have been worried about vandalism. That was definately not true of the Sonic drive in.
Yes. At 12:30 am too. These kids should have been in bed. The businesses were open and operating. Large numbers of punks mulling around waiting for something to happen can scare away a lot of customers. These casual nocturnal gatherings frequently end in fights. I know exactly what they are talking about. I can understand the concern by the local merchants.
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