Raid at hot dog joint preceded Kmart bust

Houston police Capt. Mark Aguirre, the man who ordered the arrests of 278 people at a westside Kmart last weekend, prodded a local restaurant to allow his officers to conduct a similar raid of its parking lot Saturday in a sting that netted 25 arrests.

Officials with the James Coney Island at 5745 Westheimer said they felt used after police swept in and arrested 25 people, some of whom were customers, for criminal trespass.

"We were cooperative with the idea (of the raid), but are not necessarily happy with the execution," said Darrin Straughan, a vice president with the restaurant chain. "We are victims here, too. We never imagined that this is the way it would be handled or that legitimate customers would be arrested."

Straughan said Aguirre approached the company two weeks ago and told restaurant officials that illegal drag racing along Westheimer had caused several fatal accidents and prompted neighborhood complaints. Aguirre asked the company to post four no-trespassing signs in the parking lot and to sign paperwork allowing police to make the arrests on the restaurant's property.

Company officials went along with Aguirre's plan, Straughan said, thinking their actions would be part of a subdued enforcement of city trespassing ordinances.

Instead, a swarm of officers backed by a police helicopter descended on the restaurant about 1:15 a.m. Saturday, rounding up customers and other people gathered in the parking lot. Police said the arrests continued until 4:30 a.m.

Most of those arrested, Straughan said, were among a group of motorcyclists that has gathered at the restaurant every weekend for nine years without problems.

Monica Coello, 36, was finishing a meal in the parking lot with her brother, sister, sister-in-law and 2-year-old niece when she was arrested.

"We were almost ready to leave when all the patrol cars came in and started blocking the entrances and exits," Coello said. "I wanted to lock my car, and they would not let me. They told me to shut up and walk to the back."

Coello's sister-in-law and niece were left behind, stranded. Police took Coello, her brother and sister to jail. Eventually, their mother shelled out $900 in bail, and the three siblings were freed.

"I don't see how they can call it trespassing when we were eating at the restaurant," she said. "We kept trying to explain that to police but they would not let us."

Coello's complaint is similar to that of dozens, if not hundreds, of people arrested at a Kmart and Sonic Drive-In in the 8400 block of Westheimer just after midnight Sunday.

In that incident, dozens of police -- led by Aguirre and again targeting illegal drag racing -- raided the businesses' parking lots about 12:30 a.m. Several officers said that when no evidence of drag racing was found, Aguirre ordered the arrests of the 278 people gathered there.

Those arrests prompted complaints that police failed to discriminate between loitering teens and legitimate customers when making arrests.

Straughan said James Coney Island has received about 50 customer complaints about the arrests, and the company believes that the police violated their agreement with the restaurant.

"We signed a trespass affidavit that said `James Coney Island requests on our behalf that the Houston Police Department requests all persons who are not patrons in the normal course of business to immediately leave the property or be arrested,' " Straughan said, quoting the agreement.

"From what we have learned, nobody that HPD arrested was asked whether they were there as a customer," he said. The police "just showed up, blocked off entrances, and arrested everybody."

Straughan declined to comment on Aguirre, but he said the company plans to file a complaint with the Police Department. Officials with Kmart did not respond to calls for comment.

Police spokesman Robert Hurst said Wednesday that he couldn't speak about Straughan's concerns because police are investigating Sunday's arrests in the Kmart parking lot. Hurst declined to say whether the incidents at James Coney Island would be part of that investigation.

As police and the district attorney's office attempt to sort out Sunday's mass arrests at Kmart and Sonic Drive-In, local defense lawyers say such raids are "arrest them first and ask questions later" situations that leave room for many legal challenges.

Lawyers questioned whether the no-trespassing signs posted before the arrests are sufficient warning for a criminal trespassing arrest.

"When you have got 400 kids in a parking lot, signs are obscured," said Chip Lewis, a Houston defense lawyer. "The best notice would have been to give them formal citations. There was no reason for this to come to this many arrests."

Citations would have provided adequate warning that arrests could follow, said lawyer Anthony Osso.

"It is extremely indicative of the mentality of whoever was in charge that when they had the option of giving a citation in lieu of arresting someone, they chose to make arrests," Osso said. "Those arrests were unnecessary."

Several lawyers interviewed Wednesday said those who pleaded guilty after their arrests Sunday can request a trial, arguing that their pleas were made under duress. Many of those who pleaded guilty, some of whom were teenagers, said they did so to avoid spending another night in jail.

"They were still under the shock that many of them were arrested without just cause," said Osso. "If you have never been in trouble before, and you believe the police are there to protect you, you will plead if they say you can get out."

Members of City Council said Wednesday that they had received many e-mails and phone calls regarding the weekend arrests and that the public seems outraged about the operation.

"You have young kids whose lives are now forever marked by having been arrested for criminal trespassing ... in what seems like it wasn't an appropriate endeavor," said Councilman Gabriel Vasquez.

Councilman Gordon Quan said he was worried about young people having to report the arrests when applying to college or for jobs.

"We could have resolved this with citations more easily," Quan said. "I'd like to see if there's any way that possibly can be changed."

Mayor Lee Brown said he has asked the city's Office of Inspector General to speed up its investigation.

"They are looking at all aspects of what happened that night," Brown said. "There are still a lot of questions."

The businesses had opened those parking lots to the public. The businesses were there and they were open.

For people to park when shopping at K-Mart, something a crowd of 400+, gathered to hang out and race, were not doing. The fact that there is a parking lot there does not imply people have the right to use it for whatever they want. It seems that is what you think.

You are confusing your opinion that the people shouldn't be there with a legal conclusion that they had no right to be there even if the property owners didn't mind. That legal conclusion is incorrect.

400+ people present, after dark, some of which were breaking curfew, some of which were meeting for the purpose of other unlawful acts - K-Mart, or the property owner, does not even have a legal right to allow those people to congregate. I guarantee there are numerous State, city and county laws being violated by the crowd. K-Mart has a parking lot which is there for people to park when they shop. K-Mart can't have a parade at 12:30, 1:00 AM in the lot. They can't have a party. Likewise, no once else can either. We have nuisance and noise laws being broken for sure.

If they were doing illegal acts on the parking lot, such as using drugs or fighting, they could be arrested for that.

Or breaking curfew, or breaking noise laws.......

All I am saying is that the presence of the crowd was reason enough for the cops to enter the property.

YES, THEY SCREWED UP!!!! THEY SHOULD NOT HAVE ARRESTED THOSE WHO WERE NOT MINORS!!!! EVERYONE ELSE SHOULD HAVE BEEN CITED OR TOLD TO LEAVE.

You can find another picture of him and a good story about him at this link.

Houston police Captain Mark Aguirre fights his battles on many fronts.
From a battered office in the aging depths of the South Central Division's headquarters, under the large "Don't Tread on Me" flag that dominates one cheaply paneled wall, the stocky 45-year-old oversees 18 square miles of the city. About 90,000 people live within the borders of the area he and his 150 or so officers are charged with protecting, from the gentrifying yuppies lofting into Midtown and Montrose to the established urbanites around Rice University and outside Bellaire, to the more hardened city dwellers near South Main and the east side.
There are the additional tens of thousands who come each day to work or visit the Medical Center. There are the untold numbers of new and not-so-new immigrants in the Asian areas. There are the hundreds of former prison inmates who get dropped off each month at the downtown bus station.
There are hot-sheet hotels on OST. There are stores in the Third Ward selling empty baby-food jars to hold liquid codeine or jeweler bags to hold crack.
There's graffiti on Dumpsters and buildings. There are vacant lots filled with abandoned furniture or appliances or tires.
So Aguirre has plenty of battles to choose from.
He never thought his toughest one would be fighting his own department.
But the navy veteran, the guy who can't remember a time when he didn't want to be a cop, has managed to annoy, offend and exasperate both the police brass above him and the rank-and-file below. He has accused the police chief of perjury; he treats his officers "with total disrespect," according to one police union leader.
The department, Aguirre says, is "filled with political stooges and amoral careerists" who hate to work hard. "The ones that like to work hard, I'm their hero," he says; "the other half are malingerers, crybabies and whiners."
They can all -- the chief, the officers, other divisional captains -- take their place in the complaint line behind the City Hall staffers, the advocates for the homeless, the Greyhound bus company, the civic groups that don't have the proper volunteer spirit: everyone Aguirre has managed to piss off one way or the other in his 22 years on the force.
Aguirre couldn't care less what they think. He insists he knows what works when it comes to policing, and if the city would just listen to him, instead of taking up his time with petty-ass bullshit internal-affairs complaints against him, instead of forcing him to deal with butt-covering politicians in and out of elected office, he could damn well show the world.
He'll probably never get the chance, though. After three years of shaking up the South Central Division, and much of the rest of the Houston Police Department, he may just have had enough.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Aguirre doesn't know where his lifelong urge to be a cop comes from. "It's just always been an intrinsic desire, and as I grew older it just solidified," he says. "I don't know, maybe in a previous life I was an officer or something."
The urge certainly didn't come from the "gang-infested neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago" where he grew up. "Officer Hidalgo," the local cop in that Hispanic section, "was seen as a traitor to the neighborhood -- he was just real rough with people, and he was from the neighborhood originally," Aguirre says. "People always thought he was just going around settling old scores."
Aguirre ignored the temptations of the gangs -- again, he doesn't know exactly why, it just never seemed an option to be considered -- and headed for the navy after graduating from high school in 1974.
Serving as a signalman on a destroyer escort and an aircraft carrier, he spent two years in Japan and reveled in the discipline and order of military life. He got out in 1978, pretty much broke, and went to live with his parents. His father, a blue-collar installer for Illinois Bell, had by then taken a job with Southwestern Bell, and the family had moved to Houston.
Aguirre found he "loved the climate." He waited out the one-year residency requirement before joining the Houston force in 1979 as "a young skinny policeman" patrolling the Third Ward.
"It was everything I thought it would be," he says of those early days as a cop. "I didn't want to go home and take off my uniform at the end of a shift. I could really relate to baseball players or football players, people who get paid to do something they love."
The department was different back then, he says. It was about half the size it is now, and officers stuck together more. They cared about their jobs more, too; although, Aguirre says, "That's what everyone says when they get old -- 'The kids today aren't like we were.' People have been saying that since time immemorial, so I don't know. But it seems there was more of a sense of brotherhood back then."
He got married, but like a lot of police marriages, it didn't take. She was a college classmate of Aguirre's sister, but after three years, with no kids, the couple split.
"We worked better as boyfriend and girlfriend," says Aguirre, who still hopes to have children someday. "Her mom said we were two chiefs and someone needed to be an Indian. And it wasn't going to be me being the Indian, I can tell you."
Aguirre played a role in two high-profile task forces designed to clean up high-crime areas in Gulfton and the Stella Link/Loop 610 area.
He was working at the jail in February 1990 when he got a call to help out on the Gulfton project from a supervisor who recalled his enthusiasm for the job. "It was in a moribund state, and I received a call from my captain to come over and get it off the ground," he says, "and that was very unusual, because I was not even working in that division at the time. I asked if I could bring some people with me, and we just went over there and made a tremendous, tremendous impact."
The project included assigning patrol units to stay in hot areas and crack down on loitering, public drunkenness and other offenses, coupled with drug raids and other aggressive actions.
The effects were "ephemeral," he says. Once the task force ended (federal funds had been paying for officer overtime costs), the crime returned.
And Aguirre went back to his climb up the HPD ladder, regularly acing the civil service exams. (He's a great reader, loving biographies of people such as Churchill, MacArthur, Napoleon, even noted socialist Eugene V. Debs. Some might say that's a list of monomaniacal fanatics, but Aguirre prefers to think of them as people "who speak to issues of leadership, how to get the most out of people and be true to yourself.")
Slowly, he says -- "like a frog being boiled alive without realizing it" -- things in the department began to change. The officers he came in with got enough seniority and began migrating to the plainclothes divisions. Not Aguirre. "Damn, I just love the street," he says.

You're pretending you're an expert on what the laws are in Texas.

Never said, nor implied any such thing. Basic laws against nuisances and noise, especially after dark, are very similar from city to city and State to State. I highly doubt that a big city such as Houstin has any less restrictive laws than say Jacksonville, Tallahassee or Pensacola here in Florida. Such gatherings, in unenclosed, undesignated areas are not allowed after dark. The cut-off is usually 9pm, but it may be slightly later from place to place.

But again, you do not even want to hear this. You just want to call me names(something I haven't done to you) and talk about how I'm a tyrant, a police state advocate and whatnot. I agree with you mostly about the arrests being wrong. What I wil not agree with you, and will not back down from, is my opinion that the people 1)Were doing something dangerous, and something they knew they were not supposed to do and b)that the cops had every right to disperse the crowd, regardless of "owners permission". Again, I work day in and day out with real estate and legal issues concerning it. I know such issues as noise and nuisance are addressed in every planning/zoning code and such gatherings are not permitted in such places as K-Mart parkings lots after dark. Its a frikin mixed-use area which includes residences. If a resident can hear the crowd, its not allowed. K-Mart would need a specific permit to have such a gathering, and it would not be allowed in the wee hours of the morning. If you do not believe this, then I am sorry. I will waste no more of my time trying to convince you that this type of behavior is not allowed, whether the property owner wants it or not.

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