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

Houston Chronicle ^ | Aug. 19, 2002 | By RON NISSIMOV

[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."

[EBUCK]

It makes total sense to arrest 400 people who just hang around a lot at odd hours.

First off, both businesses were appearantly open and "expecting customers" at that odd hour. Secondly, The police had no probable cause to arrest all of them. I understand that sorting out those that were loitering from those that were regular customers would be pretty tough but we can't have the police going around arresting everyone at the scene of a misdemeanor can we?

EBUCK

[Poohbah]

You are kidding right? Any fast food restarant owner would kill to have those kinds of crowds at 12:30 at night.

Actually, they don't want them: they don't buy food in proportion to their numbers, and they tend to drive away the paying customers.

If I'm thinking of hitting the local Sonic or Wendy's, and I see a bunch of teenagers milling around in the lot, I pass it up. That many kids doing nothing at 12:30 AM can turn into a bunch of kids engaging in vandalism or fighting for no discernable reason.

[EBUCK]

I can understand the concern by the local merchants.

As can I but if the police cannot distinguish the loiterers from the customers they should just round everybody up?

They handled it poorly to say the least. They could have posted 4 cops in the lot, had them start ticketing the obvious loiterers and dispersed the crowd. This kind of mass incarceration for "being in the wrong place at the wrong time" is an omen of very bad things.

EBUCK

[EBUCK]

Did the cops show up and arrest everyone at the scene. What would you be saying if you were inside the house attempting to break up the party and got arrested with the rest of them?

EBUCK

[Poohbah]

They handled it poorly to say the least. They could have posted 4 cops in the lot, had them start ticketing the obvious loiterers and dispersed the crowd. This kind of mass incarceration for "being in the wrong place at the wrong time" is an omen of very bad things.

The only information we have is what the parents of the little darlings and the little darlings themselves are deigning to give us. It may involve slightly more than "being in the wrong place at the wrong time."

[monday]

"A total waste of bandspace as long as everyone can feel special and important?"

It wasn't posted 27 times only twice. I guess you are the only one allowed to feel special and important huh? Is that the whole purpose for your nagging?

[monday]

"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."

If that is the case then I apologize.

[EBUCK]

It may indeed. But until the cops come forward with their side of the story it's all we have to go on. And what we do have looks pretty bad to me.

EBUCK

[A CA Guy]

How do you equate a regular hanging out of 400 teenagers as "Expected customers"?
Customers are usually IN THE STORE or WALKING TO THEIR CAR or WALKING HOME.
They don't hang out in mass like an attack of pod people in front of the store for periods of time!

Hopefully the misdemeanors carried nice fines to pay for most of the expenses they caused.

[EBUCK]

The funny thing is...the discussions about the multiple posts probably probably contribute more to bandwidth famine than the multiple threads themselves. Most people migrate to one or the other thread relatively quickly and usually permanently.

EBUCK

[A CA Guy]

It became a hang-out and that is illegal on private property running a business.

[EBUCK]

That's exactly my point. The cops didn't seem to investigate/reconoiter the scene. They just showed up and took everyone, even those walking to their cars it seems. No consideration given to due process, no consideration for reasonable suspision, they just showed up and netted everyone.

I have no problem with business owners protecting their property as that is their right. I just think the cops were too damn indiscriminate with regards to individual rights.

EBUCK

[Shooter 2.5]

You must have missed the first thing I wrote. I think the police handled it poorly.

[monday]

"Actually, they don't want them: they don't buy food in proportion to their numbers, and they tend to drive away the paying customers. "

I have worked at a fast food hang out where the only customers on a saturday night are high school kids. You would be surprised at how much they buy. My boss told me he made 75% of his profits on weekends especially friday and saturday nights.

I realize most families would not go to a drive in with lots of kids hanging out but at 12:30 at night there aren't many families out looking for fast food anyway.

[realpatriot71]

Arresting everyone was the right thing to do.

If you say so . . .

[Poohbah]

I have worked at a fast food hang out where the only customers on a saturday night are high school kids. You would be surprised at how much they buy. My boss told me he made 75% of his profits on weekends especially friday and saturday nights.

I've worked at places that had kids hanging out at 12:30 AM, and the kids don't buy much food after about 9PM, and the fast-food joints are completely empty after 10PM.

Normal people understand that large amounts of teenagers doing nothing in a parking lot is a BAD thing.

[headsonpikes]

"It became a hang-out..."

Exactly, and it didn't become one overnight. Prudent policing would have resulted in these get-togethers being dispersed some months ago, or whatever, instead of waiting for hundreds of teens to have made it their regular hang-out.

Mass arrests of primarily innocent people can do nothing to build respect for the authorities, but I guess no-one gives a sh*t about respect anymore; it's all about authority.

[Don Joe]

No one likes it when teenaged punks "take over" a shopping center parking lot every night for their hangouts. It happens in nearly every town, and all decent folks really hate it.

What most likely happened in this case is that the cops got sick and tired of taking angry calls from people demanding that they "do something", so they "did something".

They did something guaranteed to ensure that they don't get any more calls demanding that they do something.

Me, cynical?

Naw, just a tad jaded...

[eastforker]

I will agree with most of what you said,but,we have all heard about an ounce of protection being worth a pound of cure.Would it not have been better to have had several cops,say starting around nine or so,announcing on their PA systems that loitering in the parking lot would not be allowed and that non-patrons of any of the establishments could be arrested for tresspassing?I understand almost everyone was arrested for attempted tresspassing,this is ridiculous.I expect a whole lot of lawsuits againstHPD for unlawfull arrest and detention and I am sure there will be many lawyers that will take their case on a contingency basis.Most HPD cops in my view are a bunch of dolts,they can't even write a ticket,other than traffic,unless they call the city DA on their cell phone for directions.