This is ridiculous. Police arrests about 500 kids in Kmart parking lot on Westheimer.

The girl who said she never got in trouble other than being called to the principal's office for gossiping had me cracking up

I don't doubt some of the teens were good kids just hanging out with their friends, but I'm not buying the sap in the newspaper.

I can just see some city council member with an agenda pick up on this...

Watch the charges be dropped and the city issue an apology

 

This has been a problem at this store for a long time. I'm sure KMart has asked kids not to congregate in the parking lot on numerous occasions to no avail. At that point they are within their rights to ask that they be arrested. I don't agree with it...but it's their right. It is my right not to go to that store anymore. That's what I intend to do.

 

There were over 425 arrested. The only ones who would be willing to speak up are the ones who have a legitimate beef about being arrested, e.i. the straight A kids that were doing nothing wrong. I'm sure the "silent majority" knew they were in the wrong and did not want to be interviewed.

That being said, a simple dispersement order would have done the trick, with a single patrol car left to keep anyone from coming back.

 

I'm sure KMart has asked kids not to congregate in the parking lot on numerous occasions to no avail. At that point they are within their rights to ask that they be arrested. I don't agree with it...but it's their right.

No, it's within their right to ask that loiterers be arrested. It's NOT ok to have everyone on the premises arrested, and that's apparently what happened based on this information, at least.

 

They clearly went overboard by arresting people at Sonic. But if KMart does not want people in their parking lot and they won't leave it is their right to ask that they be hauled off. What is legal is not always what is moral or ethical. This is a good example of that assertion.

 

But if KMart does not want people in their parking lot and they won't leave it is their right to ask that they be hauled off.

Sure - but we don't know if they were even asked to or given the opportunity to leave. If you believe the stories in the article, then some, at least, weren't:

"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.

 

What is 'legitimate' about the beef the straight-A students have? Straight-A students don't do anything illegal?

And, again, I don't think a simple dispersement order would do the trick. They'd clear out for the night maybe, but they'd be back the next week if not the next night. Even if every trespassing charge were dropped, the arrests would still have the desired effect: make the kids think twice about loitering at Kmart. In that regard, I'm happy.

 

Even if every trespassing charge were dropped, the arrests would still have the desired effect: make the kids think twice about loitering at Kmart.

I think we should do this with speeding too. Any highway that people tend to speed on, let's just start pulling over and arresting people regardless of if they were doing anything wrong. Tell them that we were scared they might be speeders. Put 'em in jail for a night - they should just take it and not complain.

That'll teach 'em!!

 

Do you think KMart said Arrest our customers as well? You gonna boycott KMart for asking that the kids be removed .. . . most interesting . ..

Of all the things to boycott something for. . this is what gets ya foots to stepping .. . . .

What else are you currently boycotting?

Rocket RIver

 

ROTFLMFAO!!!

That is classic, my friend!

 

I thought it was the one near Dunvale across from that AMC 30. I think there's a Sonic right there.

 

I can't believe I'm going to say this...but I'm going to say it anyway....if these kids were white, they would not have been arrested.

Why do I think that???

Because after football games in high school we used to hang out (in HUGE groups) in the parking lot of a KMart that used to be located on I-10 between Dairy Ashford and Kirkwood (there's now a Seekers Produce Market there)...there was underage drinking...and it would last for well into the night.

I went one night in high school...and as I noticed a helicopter circling overhead, I told my friends, "Guys...I'm heading for the car." They thought I was paranoid but before I reached the car about 10 police cars came swarming in. The police screamed through the bullhorn, "If you're not out of here in 5 minutes, we will take you downtown." Everyone scrambled...there was a mad rush out of there...no one was arrested...parties in the KMart shopping center parking lot stopped abruptly.

Seems that same approach could have worked last weekend (though I did think the resources the police expended on the situation were a bit much at the time -- but then again, I know nothing about police work so I hate to second-guess that.). But ultimately that wasn't given a chance...the people were just summarily arrested. I think that's absolutely ridiculous....I was amazed at the story when I saw it over the weekend on the news.

If this were in the suburbs, it would have been just "kids being kids." They would have shooed them away...but instead they were arrested. great.

 

I doubt they'll be in business much longer anyhow.

 

My neighbor's kid was one of the arrested. He said that his son had it coming, that this had been going on all summer, and that a lot of kids were drinking more than water there. He said the police were worried about driving the kids off because there had been reports of a lot of teen drinking. Also they had run off the kids numerous times.

how would the Chronicle handle it if one or more of the drunk kids got in a wreck: "Police allow drunken teens to die"

Still, I used to do the same crap when I was a teenager, so I'm not judging anyone. The cops would herd us from one residental development or parking lot to another, it was rather comical. And I probably should not have been driving then, either. Oh, and I was a Straight-A kid, Honor Society, etc. Still broke the law from time to time.....just knew that you gotta party on the weekends and study during the week. Straight-A kids are as messed up as anyone. They are just clever enough not to get caught, I guess. Or lucky.

Taking the kids from Sonic is just ridiculous. The whole thing was excessive, but I bet it made a point. and these days it seems like if its not IN YOUR FACE and EXTREME, no one listens. Still, I would have tried something else.

 

White kids WERE arrested. If you link to the Chronicle story, two of the girls pictured are clearly white. I did not see anything in the news story to indicate the race of the arrested.

 

Right on, Major. Let's send people to jail for not using their turn signals either... for parking in a no-parking zone... for jaywalking... for having oral sex with their spouses... for not coming to a complete stop at a stop sign...

JuanValdez, maybe I haven't paid close attention to your posts in the past, but I don't remember you as a fascist.

How many of you have actually been to jail? I have. For driving with a suspended license which I had no idea was suspended. More than five years before the arrest, I'd gotten two tickets for driving without insurance and paid them -- an admission of guilt. I know I did the wrong thing, driving without insurance, but I paid tickets in excess of $500 and maintained insurance from then on. I was never told (in court, or by mail or in any other way) that my license would be or was suspended.

Five years later, I was pulled over for no reason at all (except that the cops thought I needed a shave). My stickers were good, I was 100% sober, I had insurance, I was going the speed limit and I'd just come to a complete stop sign, used my turn signal and turned. When I asked the cops why they pulled me over, they said it was a "routine stop." I've never felt so secure in the knowledge that I had nothing to fear from the cops pulling me over. Five minutes later I was handcuffed (to the point of bruising). Half an hour later, I was in the county jail with a bunch of violent offenders.

We were all equally (mis-) treated by the cops. We were cursed at, yelled at and told that if we weren't quiet we'd be beaten. Guilty til proven innocent. A middle aged black man, who was there on his first offense, was roughly dragged away because he couldn't stop crying. He never returned.

We were all forced to use a toilet with no seat, which was covered with human feces, in full view of everyone else in the cell. After a couple of hours, ten or twelve of us were herded into another room, where we stood in a line. We were instructed to strip naked, turn around and bend over. This next bit is a direct quote from our public servants. We were told to "spread yer butt cheeks! Lift up yer nut sacks!" We were then given a towel and told to take a freezing cold group shower, before being issued an orange jumpsuit. I was there 24 hours before they allowed my girlfriend to bail me out, even though she had the money and was ready to pay it an hour after my arrest. Hundreds of dollars and several court appearances later, the charges against me were dropped.

JuanValdez: Ask around. I'm not a sissy, pal. But I did indeed "learn something about law enforcement that day." I learned that I could be treated like a non-human for violating a law I didn't know was a law, five years after not knowing I'd violated it. No warning, no notification, no nothing. But I, at least, was guilty of driving without insurance, which is a bad thing to do. Never mind that I had paid the fines, was told I was free and clear and that it was five years prior to my arrest.

What the guilty kids in this case did wasn't as bad as what I did. They loitered. And they were sent to the same conditions without so much as a warning from the police. As were the innocent ones.

Whenever I see a police officer now I have the irrational feeling that I'm about to go to jail, no matter what I'm doing. That's what I "learned about law enforcement," Juan. I'm sorry that those kids had to learn the same lesson. And I'm sorry that you're not.

 

The problem with that analysis is that in Texas we value this thing called private property rights. If 429 kids are in front of your house playing loud music and talking loudly you have the right to have the cops haul them off. The same thing applies to businesses. Your example is not a good analog due to this distinction. Not to mention the fact that kids litering in a parking lot provides the probable cause necessary to an arrest. In your example no such probable cause exists.

It has been proven time and again that dispersment orders don't work well. They wait until the cops are gone and come right on back. This is why certain parking lots in Houston are well known as hangouts for kids late at night.

This has been an ongoing problem at that location for quite some time. I'm pretty sure that dispersement orders have been given time and again. It obviously has had no effect.

Nothing really. Well I don't do business with Circuit City if I can avoid it...but that's a different story for a different thread. If this story makes you angry then don't go to the store that asked it be done. If you think that this is a lame reason to avoid a store then you must think they acted appropriately. If this is not the case then you wouldn't chastize me for suggesting it.

 

The problem with that analysis is that in Texas we value this thing called private property rights. If 429 kids are in front of your house playing loud music and talking loudly you have the right to have the cops haul them off. The same thing applies to businesses. Your example is not a good analog due to this distinction. Not to mention the fact that kids litering in a parking lot provides the probable cause necessary to an arrest. In your example no such probable cause exists.

Sure, but we also have laws against speeding. According to Juan, it's OK to arrest people that may or may not have been loitering since there were other people around that certainly were loitering. The only thing some of these kids did was walk out of a KMart. And they shouldn't mind being arrested, since it's just a day in jail.

So why not the same with speeding? Let's arrest everyone when there are lots of speeders around and put them in jail. They didn't do anything wrong either, but apparently that's not really a requirement of being arrested.

I have no problem with the people who were actually loitering being arrested. Its certainly excessive, but whatever. I have a problem with the idea that people who were SHOPPING or had other legitimate reasons to be there being arrested just because and then people saying they should just accept it and "not whine about it".

This has been an ongoing problem at that location for quite some time. I'm pretty sure that dispersement orders have been given time and again. It obviously has had no effect.

So because other people are loitering, that justifies arresting KMart shoppers?

 

Batman--

This is about a property owner enforcing their rights of ownership. They chase the kids away and they keep coming back. That's illegal...it's a law...they KNEW they were breaking it. Now that KMart REALLY meant it and the consequences were faced they want to whine and moan.

It apparently was common knowledge that the kids had been drinking. This requires 2 points to be made.

1) They broke the law. You drink underage in a large group in front of a cop and you go downtown. It's not like they were there playing Yahtzee and discussing peace in the Middle East.

2) Since there was drinking...would you rather have 429 kids arrested, or 200 or so drunk kids unleashed on the streets? I'd rather them go to prison than I would have them out getting into wrecks and causing unnecessary deaths. It's an issue of public safety.

I understand that you'd rather disband the cops and have every man fend for himself. But we have cops rather than everybody going Old West on us and strapping their sidearm on and wearing their cowboy hat on their way to the saloon. You had a horrible experience and there are things that need reform...I'll readily agree to that.

All of this being said, I think that the cops went way overboard getting people out of Sonic. If I were Sonic I'd complain that they took my customers out of my restaurant and many will never come back. I agree with the arrests, but disagree with some of the methods used.

 

We agree on this. If people were just shopping then they should have nothing to fear. I have a problem with some of the methods employed. Of course if that shopper was coming out to rejoin their buddies outside for a couple of hours longer it becomes a bit different.