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

Forget my post, as well, as more facts come out while I was typing it.

As it turns out NOBODY was in violation of the statute as written.

 

My previous post stands. If his past infractions did not involve abuses of the public they had little reason to expect him to start 20 years into the job.

 

I doubt he'll lose his job now over this.

The city will be sued and people will win lots of money, but this guy will likely still be wearing an HPD badge for some time to come.

I've certainly seen and heard of much worse go by without even a reprimand.

I wonder if this is some sort of a record, by the way. Highest number of bogus arrests in one night or something like that.

I wonder if HPD will still pursue the cases in court and make each person fight the charges individually (the article sure implies that they will be). That's likely what they'd do in Dallas where people are convicted all the time for stuff that even the city and the DPD admits are bogus charges.

 

I realize that the argument has become moot...but I want to clear a few things up in a hypothetical sense.

No...it's not. It is public to the extent that KMart impliedly gives the public a license to come onto the premises to shop. It is not public in any Constitutionally meaningful way. To be Constitutionally public the government would have to own the land. Even then there are "time, place and manner" restrictions as well as permitting issues, but that's not important here because a KMart parking lot is not public under the Constitution. They can revoke the license at any time for any reason or no reason at all.

Agreed...even then it may not be the best way to handle it, but it would be permissible.

I never disagreed with that point. In fact I made it clear that I agreed with that point.

Again...Captain Aguirre should face the consequences of his command decisions. The property owner/lessee never asked that anything be done...but it sure was done all right. What a jerk Aguirre is.

 

They may win in court...but it won't be lots of money. They'll have to prove up their economic damages. I doubt that Aguirre will still be on the job when all this is over. It has become way too public. His head will roll.

That's not up to HPD. It is the decision of the Harris County District Attorney. Without the cop on the stand they will never win the case. I'll bet all charges will be dropped.

 

Refman, I didn't mean to imply that you personally said a night in jail wasn't a big deal. I got worked up and went stream of consciousness there. I meant to direct that to the few people in this thread who have said that. Apologies.

I don't think any more needs be rehashed now that we know all the facts. Aguirre was wrong, HPD absolutely shares responsibility, hundreds of kids will live the rest of their lives knowing they can be arrested at any time for no reason and thousands and thousands of dollars will be spent on lawsuits which, if there is any justice, will cost taxpayers even more when HPD pays out.

At the very least, after sending more than two hundred innocent kids to jail, Aguirre should do time himself. Like, how bout one guilty eye for 278 innocent ones? Of course, he probably won't. That, to me, is one of the most unfortunate things about this whole rotten deal. Because I would love to visit his cell and spit in his miserable face.

 

I was really hoping that was the case and I suspected it was. Therefore no apology needed my friend. It's alllll good.

Not if this is handled the right way from this point until the resolution. The kids will know that there was a rougue cop acting outside of his authority.

 

Glad of it.

None of those kids will forget their night in jail. It will be with them forever. When they see someone in a police uniform, they will no longer see a trusted authority. They will see someone who may protect them but also may harm them, even if they've done nothing wrong. It will take a lot for the police to regain their trust. Trust me. They have not regained mine. And if this cop doesn't suffer serious punishment for abusing his power to the tune of changing hundreds of innocent lives, they will never regain the trust of these children or their families.

No matter what they do, they will not regain mine.

I saw them beating innocent demonstrators, across the street from the Republican convention in 92, whose only crime was that they didn't run away fast enough. They were beaten in the backs as they ran, until they fell, and then they were beaten more. I've been pulled over and had my car searched more times than I can count, without cause. I've even been pulled over outside my mother's house, not while I was driving, but while I was walking from the house to my car, when I was home from college, and detained for fifteen minutes, while the cop told me to keep my hands where he could see them and checked my license for warrants. His reason was he'd "never seen me there before." He was new in the neighborhood. I'd lived there for seven years. The fact that the address on my license matched the one on the house I was walking out of didn't impress him.

I am grateful to police officers for putting their lives on the line. But we trust them with ultimate authority over all other citizens and deadly weapons to back it up. When they say stop, we have to stop. When they say turn around, we do it. When they say spend the night in jail, we do it. When it's our word against theirs in court, they always win. They may not always get the benefit of the doubt in the newspapers, but in the courts they get it every single time.

So when one of them abuses that power to bind innocent people, hold them against their will for several hours, tow their cars and charge them money for it, something serious must be done. That cop didn't just commit false arrest and imprisonment. What he did would be better characterized as kidnapping, assault, theft and extortion. If he weren't a cop, those are the crimes he'd have committed. But since he is one, the crimes he committed were far, far worse.

 

I've seen other false arrest cases end in big awards. And here we've got hundreds of them. Damages in civil rights cases can be very large. But even if they are only $125,000 a piece or so (which is in line with some settlements I've seen in false arrest cases), when you have to pay a couple of hundred of those, it adds up.

We had a deputy in Dallas who was convicted of hit-and-run and when he was demoted, he sued and won. Got his job back and a big fat check to boot. You'll excuse me if I don't think that this guy (and it should be these guys as they all broke the law) will see his head rolling, especially since he's unlikely to be brought up on any criminal charges in the case.

I know that, but a good DA would dismiss the whole lot of them by the end of the day tomorrow (and a good DA would be bringing all the officers up on charges). From the article, it appeared that they were going to take every one of them to trial and let it be sorted out by the judges themselves.

It's scary to me that so many officers can apparently turn into criminals so easily. These officers carrying out the orders should've known the arrests were bogus, yet they continued anyway and themselves broke the law. I understand not wanting to jeopordize one's job, but no police officer should be willing to become a criminal under any circumstances. But here, it was apparently quite easy for the officers to cross the line from law enforcer to law breaker. That's frightening.

 

I'm all for arresting KMart shoppers. Just the people that buy clothes there.

 

All I am saying is that they'll have to get over the problems of sovereign immunity and qualified immunity for the officer. After that they have to prove up their damages. Whatever the damages are...that's what they are.

I suspect that the chrges will be dropped. The DA would hate for this to be brought up come election time.

They are people. People turn into criminals easily. This isn't surprising. Disturbing? Yes. Surprising? Not really.

Most youths see that already.

I realize that...and I can't say anything other than I wish it never had happened.

Agreed. He should lose his job and brought up on corruption chrges. Not to mention the fact that not a single one of these kids should have to pay the towing charges.

 

Somebody should contact the DOJ, by the way. These officers were in violation of Title 18, Section 242, and should be brought up on Federal charges. The false arrests alone are worth up to a year in jail (and I suppose that's per count).

And if any officer pulled out his billy club or threatened to pepper spray someone, he should be looking at ten years.

How long before we get these criminals off the street? The clock is ticking, though I don't think we're going to see any charges come down from the Feds or anywhere else.

 

The DOJ is a mess. Ashcroft has become an embarrassment...he's out of control. Janet Reno wasn't any better though. Need I remind anybody about Elian Gonzalez with a machine gun pointed at his face?

 

I've got precedent that says otherwise, but whatever....

Certainly not what the story says.

They are people who chose to go into a profession that involved helping people and enforcing the law. And yet with a wave of the hand, they broke any number of laws themselves... I guess I have more faith in people to be able to resist breaking the law. I know I've managed to go my entire life without doing anything that's punishable by up to a year in jail. Doesn't seem like it should be so hard for someone who is entrusted with enforcing the law.

But I guess when you're a police officer and you know that you can usually break the law and not have to pay the consequences, it's probably easier to cross that line. If we'd actually enforce the laws that are supposed to prevent these sorts of things from occuring, I think we'd see less police corruption like this.

If each of these officers knew there was a year in jail waiting for them before they walked into the parking lot and started violating the law, I'll be some of them would've thought twice about becomming criminals.

 

Start a new thread (or grab up and old one) and remind us there. Reno was by no means perfect, but she never had a chance to cause the kind of trouble Ashcroft has. I'll take her unforgiveables against his any day. Glad you agree he's out of control, by the way.

 

And, by the way, word, mr. paige. To all you've posted in this thread.

 

Homer: Well if kids are so innocent, why is everything bad named after them? Acting childish, kidnapping, child abuse ...
Bart: What about adultery?
Homer: Not until you're older, son.

 

When a Constitutional right has been violated, the remedy is a section 1983 suit. They make up about 35% of the Federal docket. The principles of law that I brought up come from Supreme Court opinions involving 1983, many of them unchanged in 80 years of lawsuits.

I'll take neither. Reno was just as dangerous whether she had the opportunity or not. I was willing to look the other way on Ashcroft until he suggested interrment camps. Then I fell right off the party wagon as pertains to Ashcroft.

 

Beyond actual damages is punative damages, and there's nothing in the statute that conflicts with large awards being possible under 1983 or anything else.

And I can point to cases where those sued under this statute were awarded relatively large damages. The idea that these cases are only going to be worth the towing charges and legal fees (the actual damages) is not supported.

But I guess we'll see when these all come down.

 

Punitives do happen under 1983, but they are relatively rare against a municipality. Of course even nominal damages gets the plaintiff attorney fees, etc.

It will be interesting to see these cases unfold. Maybe I'll go down to the Fed courthouse and watch.