azrakain

I was directed to an article that I though you guys should read.
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/front/1539629
There will be hell to pay out there in Houston I'm sure. How can you arrest 400 people? And seperate a little girl from her dad in jail? What do you guys think about the article?

nightowl

now that makes me mad...garentied there's going to be some lawsuits over this one!

obender66

At least they didn't call in Air Force and use "smart" bombs to target riced out cars.
As somebody said-you trade your consciousness for badge and a gun...thats just disguisting!

Alex

protetype

yanno, i had this same thing happen to me about a month ago. we used to go the Chinese Mann Theatre every sunday and wednesday night to meet... around 100-400 cars would fill up a seperate un-used parking lot at the theatre. well, after about 7 months of this, the businesses around starting getting annoyed with all the cars and people. so one night, we were there early around 8:30, about 9 of our cars (my friends and i) and a few other people (about 20 other cars) and out of nowhere, around 25 patrol cars raided this lot and blocked us all in. they weren't dumb enough to try to arrest us all, they just lined up people and handed out a nice stack of trespassing tickets. i have to go to court on tuesday for this. the cops did this for the next 4 nights (sun, wed, sun, wed) until they handed out a good few hundred tickets for trespassing at this place. it's not uncommon... but luckily cops here aren't all psycho and aren't out to arrest people for doing this, just getting the point across enough to where people don't want to go back to that spot.

SEA_P5

I call this a very large class action lawsuit. Considering that the parking lot is shared between multiple businesses, it is unethical an incorrect. A parking lot shared by multiple business can not be deemed as trasspassing...especially considered that the parking lot is community property of all business on that particular strip.

But if each business signs a waiver to allow police action...that is a whole different matter. I would no longer shop at those particular stores anymore if I was any of those patrons. Idiots stores, you would assume that they want the business...I guess not by allowing the police on the property.

JDMstuff

That's really screwed up.

fourty03

That is very stupid - now that'll be on their records now. soon you know it , we wont be able to loiter in the park with the kids ..! hehe

Its just some cops are just ********! There are the 10% that are acutally nice and the rest are ******.... (sorry for the language)

I have gotten arested 3 months ago for have my music up too loud in a public parking lot in the afternoon (just before 12:30pm) and ealier, the undercover cops (we call them knockers... hehe or knarks?) try to run his car into my protege ... he said "where the F*** are you going" i said get the f out my way.... then we just stared at each other for like 30 seconds - he had a very stupid look also - then he said "what the f*** u lookin at" then i said are u going to f*** move!? then he speeded away going the wrong way on a one way street... <--- them kind dont need to have authority we give them.!


Earl

protetype

"This story describes a mass bust of patrons at a hot dog stand in Houston where the police had persuaded the owners to put up no tresspassing signs and sign an agreement that people could be arrested by them for trespassing." Unfortunately, this is completely legal :/ Now, in this case the cops arrested anyone and everyone, and that's just stupid. Usually at 'raids' like this, the cops have spotters (undercover cars, vans, diesel trucks, and even impounded street racers' cars) there that record (written, and videotaped) when people pull into the lots, give them a specific time limit of being there, then they move in. The trespassing signs are small, but usually always there, especially when a lot of businesses share a lot like this. They want you either in a business, or not there. This incident, got way out of control by arresting that many people, for something like this. In most cases (such as mine) the cops just hand out trespassing tickets, which most of the time get dropped... but the cops are going to make it a hassle for you, and inconvenience you enough to where you don't want to go back to that spot to get another ticket, which the next time, probably won't get dropped. So, this isn't as stupid or messed up as everyone thinks... It's business protecting their *real* patrons, and making it so people aren't afraid to come there with a group of 300 people revving their engines, doing burnouts, listening to music like it's a sound competition, and starting fights. Street racing has it's consequences... If you're not into this, and get caught up in it... sorry, **** happens.

vkyolv

It's a pretty ridculous scene without the police involved anyways.

vkyolv

Usually there are a couple of light to light stripsin that area where the raid happened at that you can see mass amount of police sitting off in a field watching. When you see them out in the field it is time to book it.

NoahsMP5

Thats f**ked. How do you explain that. At the very least they should have been asked to leave before anything like this.

If my 75 year old grandmother was walking through would she have been cuffed?

I do question why a ten year old is eating at sonic at 12:30 at night .

carguycw

It's funny that this topic has showed up on a national forum. The local Texas email lists have been full of commentary on this raid all week. Let me clear this discussion up with some facts gleaned from the Houston papers and some friends of mine who live there....

According to the followup investigations by the Houston paper (don't have the links handy, I will post them later) the entire bust was a huge screw-up by the HPD, and heads are already rolling at the Department. According to press interviews with police officers, the HPD *HAD* staked out the lot for weeks, complete with undercover officers and photos of cars and suspected street racers who showed up repeatedly. The parking lot where the bust took place is an established hangout for street racers, and has been for years.

The problem came when the cops moved in to arrest the racers. The HPD decided to move in last Saturday....and none of the racers showed up. Apparently, the captain in charge of the operation has a reputation as a hothead, and he was so pissed off that none of the racers showed that he decided to arrest everyone anyway!

The street where this parking lot is located is not an isolated street-racer hangout in some industrial park; it's a major commercial strip where lots of teenagers cruise around on weekends. Although street racers often gather in this parking lot, it's frequently filled with kids who are just hanging out and wasting time, and that's who was there that night. The HPD swooped in and arrested almost everyone.

Some of the early reports are exaggerations- no 10-year-old was arrested, and the final arrest total was 278, not 400 plus- but the concept is still the same. Although the target of the raid was street racers, the HPD did not arrest ANYONE that the raid was originally targeted towards. They did NOT arrest any street racers. They arrested a bunch of kids hanging out with their friends.

Do not think that this raid was a bunch of street racers "getting what they asked for". That is not what happened. Although these teenagers may not have been participating in a worthwhile pursuit, and there WERE "No Trespassing" signs in the parking lot, IMHO this arrest was a huge clusterf*ck by the HPD. These kids did NOT get what they deserved. If the cops wanted to get rid of them, they SHOULD have issued citations to a few people, then told everyone else to leave- NOT hauled every last one of them off to the station in handcuffs. This will probably HURT their efforts to stop street racing on Westheimer because all the cops will be stuck in court.

All IMHO of course.

Sir Nuke

that is some pretty sorry work on the part of the HPD....I have seen them do this sort of thing before.....and it back fired then too....

there will certainly be some carp stirred up over this OBVIOUS blunder.

Pro_fan

Mmm...carp....
LOL! Just messing w/ ya Nuke!!

azrakain

follow up: http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.ht...olitan/1542463