...K P F T news

LEAD-IN BY HOST KATHRYN BINOVI: The raid on K-Mart shoppers earlier this month by the Houston Police Department was a surprise to some residents, but not to all. Renee Feltz has the story:

STORY:If you go to the suburbs, people can like stand outside and congregate and talk and the police aren't really going to look at that as something's going on wrong. But when you come to the inner city, it's like that right is taken away from you. If we go outside of our apartment complex and we stand around, they tell us to go inside or find something else to do and we just tell the cops, 'we're just out here, we're not doing anything illegal we're just coming outside like people do to talk to each other.' And they tend to think that's a problem."

Houston's inner city youth are getting a chance to say "I told you so in" the wake of strong public criticism being leveled against the Houston Police Department over an incident earlier this month in which at least 50 officers raided a teenage hang-out spot on Houston's West side.

Initial reports indicated over 400 people were arrested while hanging out in a K-mart parking lot on Westheimer near Dunvale, a moderate to high income level community. Police later stated the number arrested was actually 278. Everyone caught in the parking lot was taken to jail on charges of criminal trespass.

Most of those arrested spent the night and jail, and pled no contest to their charges - something they may not have done with access to better legal advice. Like many inner city teens who complain of routine police harassment, these youth too - now have a criminal record.

The raid is believed to be the largest in HPD's history. But one young Houstonian from a low income African-American community on the city's south side believes that while the number of people arrested may be of note, the police behavior displayed that night is nothing new:

"Things such as ways going on, and kicking people out of parking lots for no apparent reason really has been going on in the black community for a while. But it never got media coverage. I feel it wasn't right, I'm glad something is being done about it, but I feel like it should have been done a long time ago."

Police accountability watch dog groups like Corpus Justice, an organization that teaches teens about their civil rights, say the raid was uncalled for. Group founder, Marilyn Head:

"I don't have a problem with people arresting someone breaking the law. But I do have a problem with police going in and arresting everyone indiscriminately ..."

HPD's pre-planned round-up was originally meant to target teens who drag race cars up and down a specific strip of Westheimer.

When no racing was discovered, the captain in charge of the raid ordered his officers to arrest everyone on site. When Chief Bradford spoke to City Council on Wednesday about the public criticism surrounding the raid, he spoke of holding Captain Mark Aguirre and the arresting officers accountable for what many are calling police misconduct.

Marilyn Head tells how the officers were described by City council members at the meeting:

"Gordon Quon and Ada Edwards both talked about how people had called them and said all the officers had acted so calmly about what they were doing. So this is just a matter of procedure, and the truth probably is, the bottom line is, it is a matter of procedure. And if they're violating the law by arresting like that and it's a matter of procedure, we've got a serious, fascist problem within the HPD police department."

Bradford was out of town at the time of the incident, but Head argues he should still be held accountable for the mass arrest of teens:

"Bradford's also guilty too, because he's in charge. And if this guy thinks he can act like that as soon as Bradford steps out of town, then this has been going on before."

An HPD internal affairs investigation of the parking lot raid is now underway, along with a parallet investigation by the District Attorney's office. But activists like Marilyn Head see problems with this solution to holding police accountable for harassing behavior that she and many young people consider a systemic problem:

"We can no longer depend on our police department and the district attorneys office to give us responsible, reliable investigations. It is not going to happen. Not when the same people are involved in the kind of activities that took place at K-Mart and take place every day in minor communities on a minor scale all over the city."

While Marilyn Head holds little faith in a meaningful outcome to these investigations, she is hoping the attention the controversy generates will strengthen her push for a civilian review board that is independent of police oversight. The young man from a low income community of color that spoke with this reporter, agrees:

"You have to go back and look at it as a big problem. And not just, OK now it's happening in the middle of America so let's tackle it now. You have to tackle it when it is a problem and not when it's a problem with a certain genre of people. We have to tackle the problem when it exists and where the problem's at. If the problem exists in the low income class of america or in the higher class of people in america, no matter where it is, those people have rights and you have to tackle the problem wherever it is."

Renee Feltz, KPFT News, Houston.

E-mail Renee Feltz at chickpea_@ziplip.com.