I know this is upsetting and I am a it angered too but the article is pretty biased.
First off, there is a curfew in Houston and I do believe that curfew is midnight for 18 and under.
Second, Kmart is private property. If they gave permission for the gathering to take place, then that is all find and dandy but since they are open 12 hours, I DOUBT very much permission was granted. 400+ kids... without supervision... in a not so wonderful part of the city whether they are all good kids or not... something is bound to happen.
Kmart would be responsible if any thing happened physically to the kids. Also on behalf of Kmart, the store being open 24 hours... have less staff at night - meaning less security.
ALSO... WHAT moron of a parent would let their kids romp around at 1230 at night in a parking lot of a Kmart???
Also, in the article, they quoted some 13 and 14 years as saying a 10 year old girl was seperated from her dad and arrested (again... moron parent taking a 10 year old to dinner at 1230am at a KMART?). Whether this is true or not... I dont know (I doubt it) but no mention that the writer or the paper tried to contact HPD themselves? Or did I miss that part?
There is a Sonic next to the K-Mart; that's probably where the girl's father took her for dinner.
And what about the people who were arrested on their way out of the store after buying something? I think that may be the part that offends me the most.
"what about the people who were arrested on their way out of the store after buying something?"
precisely. exactly how could those pigs of policemen justify classifying departing customers as trespassers? if i hang around a place of business after having patronized it for a certain amount of time, does that make me a "trespasser?" if so, WHY? pf.
I can understand that (the people inside buying something and coming out and being arrested). I can understand that the police were out of order - but so where the kids who were congregating in the parking lot. HOW are the police to know that the kids didnt go inside from being in the crowd to get something only to come back out again.
I am sorry if I am sounding like a preacher against kids and for Kmart or the HPD (believe me - I DONT shop Kmart so they are NOT high on my priority list to defend). That certainly is not my intention. The kids should not have been there in the first place - that is my point. But they were and there was a history of neighborhood disturbance because of them being there. Someone finally got fed up. Most likely it was the store management.
Oh, and if a father takes his 10 year old child to a sonic at 1230 at night... how did he lose track of her? She gets out of the car to see some friends (ok, it can happen)... but why would he let her out of his sight for a moment? She's 10 years old... she's outside of the car for a few moments in a crowd - a crowd of kids that might just be bigger than she is - WHAM! She is swallowed by the crowd instantly. She is lucky she was not taken by some child rapist.
How do you know? I dont know... you dont know... all we have is the testimony of a 13 year old boy saying what he spoke with the little girl... with no testimony from the father or even what the police report said.
Anything could have happened. What I suggested, what you suggested. Who knows?
I misread some of the article. We dont have a testimony from a 13 year old...
On another topic entirely... I am having trouble with my PC too and some things are getting posted twice and too soon... and I try to delete the doubled entries but LJ is having issues.
First of all 18 year olds are by law adults and do not have a curfew. Next I happen to be a "moron" parent who takes my kids out to eat late at night. Ironically my kids are even YOUNGER than 10. We are late night people, everyone in my house doesn't go to bed till around midnight. On nights when we have had to spend HOURS in the hospital where they do not give you food we have gone out to eat. There are times when we are traveling or we have been out doing things late that we go out to eat... Calling a parent a "moron" for having THEIR child out late at night without knowing the circumstances... That is just wrong.
As a parent I think that I should be the judge of whether or not my child gets to go out late at night or not. I also think that if I am WITH them then no one has the right to take my child away from me.
Consider this, I have spent as many as 10 hours in the Texas Childrens Hospital ER with my son for various medical conditions. Now lets have an example: After spending all that time in the ER and not being allowed to feed him (and this can be in the middle of the day to late at night), I go out to eat near my home and some police officer decides to "raid" the place where I am eating with my child and then take them to JV. To say that I would be suing their butts is an understatement.
In my son's case what they would have done could kill him as he has a medical condition that makes him very likely to become dangerously hypoglycemic in a short amount of time. Now since I home school and my son is 4 almost 5 he does not have to get up bright and early for school as we have a later schedule. Having someone outside of my family try and define my family schedule and tell me what is and is not appropriate for my family even though they do not know the in's and out's of my family...
As for the other teens who were out at Karoke or something else and not just causing trouble I find it detestible that someone would arrest them for being "in the wrong place at the wrong time". I would hope they would have the sense not to arrest me if I were a customer of either Sonic or Kmart... However apparently they did not. This is not something to mess around with either, these charges stay on your permenant record.
First let me apologize for calling any parent a moron. I was out of line.
I am not calling you a moron for taking your child out late at night for dinner. I am saying that the father of the 10 year left her get out of his sight in a crowd of kids who are bigger than she is in an area that is not known for it's high security. I am from Houston. I know that particular area well. It is not crackville however, leaving a child unattended in a crowd of 400+ other kids and who knows who else.. for even a spilt second can be a disaster.
Now... if the child was WITH her father and the police raided the place and took her from his custody.. yes, Sue the dickins out of them.
I wasn't sure if the father was with her or not. I was under the impression that the father was with her and she was taken (that is what I thought I read in the article).
If they took her from him then they deserve a nice heafty lawsuit.
If she got seperated because she had to use the restroom or other perfectly understandable causes then I can understand that. However if he let her out of his sight into the crowd of people.... Then I would have a problem with it.
I also said something to the effect of, "would you let your son be in an area full of over 400 kids of various ages un-supervised?" Add to that if you said yes... "would you let this happen at 1230am (after a law of curfew) in an area of the city that is not known for it's high security or utopian atmosphere?"
I am from downtown Houston - Montrose area (Houston is a big city so I thought I would pinpoint where I am from), I do know the area in question pretty well as I also lived on Westhiemer right near Fondren (near the Kmart in question).
Many of the kids arrested were under age and without parental supervision. There is also listed that the neighborhood has complained against the late night disturbance caused by the gatherings.
Again, I apologize for the name calling earlier. I dont apologize for being the only one not blaming ONLY the City of Houston (HPD) for what happened.
There is more to this story than the article is saying. It's biased and leaves out all sorts of stuff that may or may not have happened.
So... I may have judged the parents (I was wrong to do so and so quickly), but others have judged the situation before getting all the facts too - which is the obvious goal of the article since they have left out key things and left lots of questions unanswered.
There's a followup to the article I linked to yesterday here.
"Aguirre and other officers said the raids were intended to cut down on reports of illegal drag racing along Westheimer that threatened the safety of residents and drivers in the area."
OK, that's all fine and good, but why then not arrest people who were drag racing, rather than people who were for the most part minding their own business? For that matter, why was no one either given a warning or citation, rather than being arrested? It just doesn't smell right.
I would have to say that we may not know all the reasons and explainations, however there had to have been another way. Some of the teens were adults and not out past curfew and others were out past curfew. Those who were out past curfew it would have been easier to call their parents....
I honestly don't know but I do think that them arresting the people eating at the Sonic's was a bit overboard.
And how many people have heard from the police that a curfew is generally not in force?
Sorry, arresting 425 kids without warning is ridiculous. Second of all, in my opinion as well as in the opinion of the ACLU, youth curfew laws are unconstitutional - there is no legal basis to restrict the movement of a law abiding citizen and U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ruled that it was unconstitutional based on a lawsuit filed against Washington DC.
While the District tried to argue that minors simply do not have a constitutional right to freedom of movement as adults do, the Judge disagreed, pointing to ample Supreme Court precedent supporting that right with only narrow limitations. Among the cases he quoted was a 1976 landmark decision, in which the Court commented, "Constitutional rights do not mature and come into being magically only when one attains the state-defined age of majority."
So, on that basis alone, I say non-lawbreaking minors have a right to be wherever they damn well please if they have their parents permission, and the government is in the wrong for attempting to legislate morality *again*.
My second point is that my son is homeschooled. He is four years old, and we do not follow the time clock of the rest of America - I and my husband work until four a.m. He goes to sleep around 2-3 am and he wakes up around 12 p.m., and if his pediatrition has no problem with it it's no one's business where he is at 1 a.m. or what he's doing at 1 a.m. other than mine.
*If* they were breaking a law (that was constitutional) it was loitering, and if they were loitering the common means to stop the loitering is to ask people to leave and if they don't go, then you arrest them - this swarm and book gestapo tactic was inexcusable. How many were arrested for drugs? drinking? If they had been, I bet it would have been in that article.
WalMart and KMart both have a history of allowing people to loiter - they both have aggressive PR programs that invite traveling elderly folks in RV's to park overnight at their stores in hopes of becoming their stock up stop. In light of that, this was ageism in it's truest extent.
I hope that this ACLU gets involved, because no matter which way you look at it this was firing a shotgun at a fly, and IMO a severe violation of those kids' civil rights.
I admit I know little about curfew - besides I should not have brought it up because it is not part of the article.
What I will say is that many people are not seeing the whole issue as the article is biased and leaves out TOO much information and all any of us has is speculative.
I dont believe if any one was arrested for drugs or alcohol would be in the article at all if it did or did not happen.
My complaint is that the article is misleading because it leaves out too many details. I am trying to see things from all sides.
I still believe that under age kids, (yes they have civil rights and yes, those rights may have been broken) were unattended by their legal guardians or unsupervised and should not have been - unattended that is.
Do you then disagree with driver's licenses for kids 16, 17, and 18
Do you disagree with laws that allow parents to leave children at home alone if they are 10 and older?
Do you have an explanation as to why someone over 18 years old, the age of majority and the age in which one is legally allowed to cast a vote and legally allowed to sign up for the military or enter a contract without parental permission, were arrested? (Brandi Ratliff, 18. Kris Karsteter, 21. Kyesa Scott, 18. Emily Demmler, 19. Jerome Williams, 19.)
The only person in that article that we know for *sure* was arrested that was under age was Soneary Sy's son, who was a 17 year old straight A student. There was nothing presented other than one young woman's report that there "appeared to be" kids as young as fourteen, and one as young as 10. The people that we do know were arrested were older teens and young adults of the legal age of majority in a public place, and some who had patronized that public place and spent money in the places of business that took their money and then allowed them to be arrested.
That's what we do know from that article. And if, as you say, the article was light on facts and therefor none of us should be making judgments, I fail to see where you are getting your facts to support your theories.
The facts, as I see them, is that older teens and young adults were arrested in a public place without a warning to leave on the request of a company that has a policy of allowing loitering by the elderly. The article said the Houston PD "arrested about 425 people for criminal trespassing, a misdemeanor" - not for curfew violations. The stores would have had to press trespassing charges against the youths, all 425, as this was a public parking lot and not a private place.
How you can come to the conclusion that the Houston PPD was right is beyond me, but your assertion that there isn't enough information in there to make a judgment is *really* beyond me.
I feel sorry for the people whose property taxes are going to be used (and probably raised) to cover this, but I hope they sue the bastards into never daring to try this again.
This actually reminds me of something that happened to a friend of mine in West Virginia... Granted it was his own fault but still it was the rent a cops that went nuts.
This friend of ours is a big Star Wars fan and he was talking to one of the cashiers at the WalMart. He mentioned that he had an entire Vader costume in the trunk of the car and he could bring it in and show her. She agreed and he goes out to the car, puts on the entire thing and then runs into the out door because he can't see in the mask. As he finally gets to the entrance a rent a cop stands there with a gun threatening him. Then several cops show up. My husband and a few other people are there with him and they are drug out and searched several times. After several minutes and going through their car they determine that they did nothing wrong.
They tell said friend of ours to "Go fulfill his galatic fantasies elsewhere". One of our friends was banned from that WalMart however, a fellow friend of ours had a grandmother who owned most of the Walmart in question. She had the people involved in the fiasco fired for involving the rest of the group when it was obvious that they had nothing to do with how stupid our friend had acted (had they have been there he would NOT have walked into the store like that, they were getting things from other parts of the store and did not know what moron boy was planning).
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2002-08-26 04:50 pm (UTC)First off, there is a curfew in Houston and I do believe that curfew is midnight for 18 and under.
Second, Kmart is private property. If they gave permission for the gathering to take place, then that is all find and dandy but since they are open 12 hours, I DOUBT very much permission was granted. 400+ kids... without supervision... in a not so wonderful part of the city whether they are all good kids or not... something is bound to happen.
Kmart would be responsible if any thing happened physically to the kids. Also on behalf of Kmart, the store being open 24 hours... have less staff at night - meaning less security.
ALSO... WHAT moron of a parent would let their kids romp around at 1230 at night in a parking lot of a Kmart???
Also, in the article, they quoted some 13 and 14 years as saying a 10 year old girl was seperated from her dad and arrested (again... moron parent taking a 10 year old to dinner at 1230am at a KMART?). Whether this is true or not... I dont know (I doubt it) but no mention that the writer or the paper tried to contact HPD themselves? Or did I miss that part?
Re:
Date: 2002-08-26 04:57 pm (UTC)And what about the people who were arrested on their way out of the store after buying something? I think that may be the part that offends me the most.
no subject
Date: 2002-08-26 05:23 pm (UTC)precisely. exactly how could those pigs of policemen justify classifying departing customers as trespassers? if i hang around a place of business after having patronized it for a certain amount of time, does that make me a "trespasser?" if so, WHY? pf.
no subject
Date: 2002-08-26 06:40 pm (UTC)I am sorry if I am sounding like a preacher against kids and for Kmart or the HPD (believe me - I DONT shop Kmart so they are NOT high on my priority list to defend). That certainly is not my intention. The kids should not have been there in the first place - that is my point. But they were and there was a history of neighborhood disturbance because of them being there. Someone finally got fed up. Most likely it was the store management.
Oh, and if a father takes his 10 year old child to a sonic at 1230 at night... how did he lose track of her? She gets out of the car to see some friends (ok, it can happen)... but why would he let her out of his sight for a moment? She's 10 years old... she's outside of the car for a few moments in a crowd - a crowd of kids that might just be bigger than she is - WHAM! She is swallowed by the crowd instantly. She is lucky she was not taken by some child rapist.
It's just common sense.
Re:
Date: 2002-08-26 07:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-08-26 07:14 pm (UTC)Anything could have happened. What I suggested, what you suggested. Who knows?
My mistake
Date: 2002-08-26 07:19 pm (UTC)On another topic entirely...
I am having trouble with my PC too and some things are getting posted twice and too soon... and I try to delete the doubled entries but LJ is having issues.
Sorry for all of that.
Woah... Before you judge the parents...
Date: 2002-08-26 06:18 pm (UTC)As a parent I think that I should be the judge of whether or not my child gets to go out late at night or not. I also think that if I am WITH them then no one has the right to take my child away from me.
Consider this, I have spent as many as 10 hours in the Texas Childrens Hospital ER with my son for various medical conditions. Now lets have an example: After spending all that time in the ER and not being allowed to feed him (and this can be in the middle of the day to late at night), I go out to eat near my home and some police officer decides to "raid" the place where I am eating with my child and then take them to JV. To say that I would be suing their butts is an understatement.
In my son's case what they would have done could kill him as he has a medical condition that makes him very likely to become dangerously hypoglycemic in a short amount of time. Now since I home school and my son is 4 almost 5 he does not have to get up bright and early for school as we have a later schedule. Having someone outside of my family try and define my family schedule and tell me what is and is not appropriate for my family even though they do not know the in's and out's of my family...
As for the other teens who were out at Karoke or something else and not just causing trouble I find it detestible that someone would arrest them for being "in the wrong place at the wrong time". I would hope they would have the sense not to arrest me if I were a customer of either Sonic or Kmart... However apparently they did not. This is not something to mess around with either, these charges stay on your permenant record.
Re: Woah... Before you judge the parents...
Date: 2002-08-26 06:48 pm (UTC)I am not calling you a moron for taking your child out late at night for dinner. I am saying that the father of the 10 year left her get out of his sight in a crowd of kids who are bigger than she is in an area that is not known for it's high security. I am from Houston. I know that particular area well. It is not crackville however, leaving a child unattended in a crowd of 400+ other kids and who knows who else.. for even a spilt second can be a disaster.
Now... if the child was WITH her father and the police raided the place and took her from his custody.. yes, Sue the dickins out of them.
Re: Woah... Before you judge the parents...
Date: 2002-08-26 10:25 pm (UTC)If they took her from him then they deserve a nice heafty lawsuit.
If she got seperated because she had to use the restroom or other perfectly understandable causes then I can understand that. However if he let her out of his sight into the crowd of people.... Then I would have a problem with it.
Re: Woah... Before you judge the parents...
Date: 2002-08-27 01:54 am (UTC)Re: Woah... Before you judge the parents...
Date: 2002-08-27 07:42 am (UTC)Re: Woah... Before you judge the parents...
Date: 2002-08-26 07:46 pm (UTC)I also said something to the effect of, "would you let your son be in an area full of over 400 kids of various ages un-supervised?" Add to that if you said yes... "would you let this happen at 1230am (after a law of curfew) in an area of the city that is not known for it's high security or utopian atmosphere?"
I am from downtown Houston - Montrose area (Houston is a big city so I thought I would pinpoint where I am from), I do know the area in question pretty well as I also lived on Westhiemer right near Fondren (near the Kmart in question).
Many of the kids arrested were under age and without parental supervision. There is also listed that the neighborhood has complained against the late night disturbance caused by the gatherings.
Again, I apologize for the name calling earlier. I dont apologize for being the only one not blaming ONLY the City of Houston (HPD) for what happened.
There is more to this story than the article is saying. It's biased and leaves out all sorts of stuff that may or may not have happened.
So... I may have judged the parents (I was wrong to do so and so quickly), but others have judged the situation before getting all the facts too - which is the obvious goal of the article since they have left out key things and left lots of questions unanswered.
Re: Woah... Before you judge the parents...
Date: 2002-08-26 07:57 pm (UTC)Re: Woah... Before you judge the parents...
Date: 2002-08-27 07:44 am (UTC)Well, I will leave it at that.
Does anyone understand where I am trying to say here?
Re: Woah... Before you judge the parents...
Date: 2002-08-27 10:35 am (UTC)Re: Woah... Before you judge the parents...
Date: 2002-08-27 10:57 am (UTC)"Aguirre and other officers said the raids were intended to cut down on reports of illegal drag racing along Westheimer that threatened the safety of residents and drivers in the area."
OK, that's all fine and good, but why then not arrest people who were drag racing, rather than people who were for the most part minding their own business? For that matter, why was no one either given a warning or citation, rather than being arrested? It just doesn't smell right.
Re: Woah... Before you judge the parents...
Date: 2002-08-26 10:27 pm (UTC)I honestly don't know but I do think that them arresting the people eating at the Sonic's was a bit overboard.
Re: Woah... Before you judge the parents...
Date: 2002-08-26 10:44 pm (UTC)Sorry, arresting 425 kids without warning is ridiculous. Second of all, in my opinion as well as in the opinion of the ACLU, youth curfew laws are unconstitutional - there is no legal basis to restrict the movement of a law abiding citizen and U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ruled that it was unconstitutional based on a lawsuit filed against Washington DC.
While the District tried to argue that minors simply do not have a constitutional right to freedom of movement as adults do, the Judge disagreed, pointing to ample Supreme Court precedent supporting that right with only narrow limitations. Among the cases he quoted was a 1976 landmark decision, in which the Court commented, "Constitutional rights do not mature and come into being magically only when one attains the state-defined age of majority."
So, on that basis alone, I say non-lawbreaking minors have a right to be wherever they damn well please if they have their parents permission, and the government is in the wrong for attempting to legislate morality *again*.
My second point is that my son is homeschooled. He is four years old, and we do not follow the time clock of the rest of America - I and my husband work until four a.m. He goes to sleep around 2-3 am and he wakes up around 12 p.m., and if his pediatrition has no problem with it it's no one's business where he is at 1 a.m. or what he's doing at 1 a.m. other than mine.
*If* they were breaking a law (that was constitutional) it was loitering, and if they were loitering the common means to stop the loitering is to ask people to leave and if they don't go, then you arrest them - this swarm and book gestapo tactic was inexcusable. How many were arrested for drugs? drinking? If they had been, I bet it would have been in that article.
WalMart and KMart both have a history of allowing people to loiter - they both have aggressive PR programs that invite traveling elderly folks in RV's to park overnight at their stores in hopes of becoming their stock up stop. In light of that, this was ageism in it's truest extent.
I hope that this ACLU gets involved, because no matter which way you look at it this was firing a shotgun at a fly, and IMO a severe violation of those kids' civil rights.
Re: Woah... Before you judge the parents...
Date: 2002-08-27 07:40 am (UTC)What I will say is that many people are not seeing the whole issue as the article is biased and leaves out TOO much information and all any of us has is speculative.
I dont believe if any one was arrested for drugs or alcohol would be in the article at all if it did or did not happen.
My complaint is that the article is misleading because it leaves out too many details. I am trying to see things from all sides.
I still believe that under age kids, (yes they have civil rights and yes, those rights may have been broken) were unattended by their legal guardians or unsupervised and should not have been - unattended that is.
Re: Woah... Before you judge the parents...
Date: 2002-08-27 10:35 am (UTC)Do you then disagree with driver's licenses for kids 16, 17, and 18
Do you disagree with laws that allow parents to leave children at home alone if they are 10 and older?
Do you have an explanation as to why someone over 18 years old, the age of majority and the age in which one is legally allowed to cast a vote and legally allowed to sign up for the military or enter a contract without parental permission, were arrested? (Brandi Ratliff, 18. Kris Karsteter, 21. Kyesa Scott, 18. Emily Demmler, 19. Jerome Williams, 19.)
The only person in that article that we know for *sure* was arrested that was under age was Soneary Sy's son, who was a 17 year old straight A student. There was nothing presented other than one young woman's report that there "appeared to be" kids as young as fourteen, and one as young as 10. The people that we do know were arrested were older teens and young adults of the legal age of majority in a public place, and some who had patronized that public place and spent money in the places of business that took their money and then allowed them to be arrested.
That's what we do know from that article. And if, as you say, the article was light on facts and therefor none of us should be making judgments, I fail to see where you are getting your facts to support your theories.
The facts, as I see them, is that older teens and young adults were arrested in a public place without a warning to leave on the request of a company that has a policy of allowing loitering by the elderly. The article said the Houston PD "arrested about 425 people for criminal trespassing, a misdemeanor" - not for curfew violations. The stores would have had to press trespassing charges against the youths, all 425, as this was a public parking lot and not a private place.
How you can come to the conclusion that the Houston PPD was right is beyond me, but your assertion that there isn't enough information in there to make a judgment is *really* beyond me.
no subject
Date: 2002-08-26 06:21 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2002-08-26 06:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-08-26 06:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-08-26 10:00 pm (UTC)I'd say its more the idiot rent-a-hero (cops) that were invovled
for just asuming everyones guilty unless proven inocent.
and i'm willing to bet many facts aren't shown. but still they over did it imo :-)
no subject
Date: 2002-08-26 10:33 pm (UTC)This friend of ours is a big Star Wars fan and he was talking to one of the cashiers at the WalMart. He mentioned that he had an entire Vader costume in the trunk of the car and he could bring it in and show her. She agreed and he goes out to the car, puts on the entire thing and then runs into the out door because he can't see in the mask. As he finally gets to the entrance a rent a cop stands there with a gun threatening him. Then several cops show up. My husband and a few other people are there with him and they are drug out and searched several times. After several minutes and going through their car they determine that they did nothing wrong.
They tell said friend of ours to "Go fulfill his galatic fantasies elsewhere". One of our friends was banned from that WalMart however, a fellow friend of ours had a grandmother who owned most of the Walmart in question. She had the people involved in the fiasco fired for involving the rest of the group when it was obvious that they had nothing to do with how stupid our friend had acted (had they have been there he would NOT have walked into the store like that, they were getting things from other parts of the store and did not know what moron boy was planning).