Paper: Houston Chronicle
Date: FRI 09/27/2002
Section: A
Page: 27 MetFront
Edition: 3 STAR
 

Kmart raid could prove very costly / City may end up paying millions of dollars in damages in scores of lawsuits expected over mass arrests; loss of trust also could be part of tab.

By JO ANN ZUNIGA
Staff

The mass arrests of nearly 300 people during two westside police raids last month could cost Houston taxpayers millions of dollars in legal damages, not to mention the cost to the Houston Police Department in terms of public trust, legal experts said Thursday.

In an operation that quickly graduated from embarrassment to scandal and then to potential financial fiasco, dozens of police officers rounded up 298 people gathered in westside business parking lots the weekend of Aug. 17 and 18 and charged them with curfew and trespassing violations.

Although police said the arrests were part of a crackdown on illegal drag racing in the area, many of those arrested said they were customers of the businesses involved and that police ignored their protests of innocence.

Top city officials, including Police Chief C.O. Bradford, immediately criticized the arrests, and Mayor Lee Brown announced Sept. 10 that all charges stemming from the arrests would be dropped.

But few expected the city's actions to deflect the expected lawsuits arising from the arrests. One suit, seeking $100 million in damages, was recently dismissed because of technical problems, but others either have been filed or will be soon.

Legal experts said this week it's difficult to estimate how much the suits might cost the city. One lawyer involved in the case said he expects as many as 100 lawsuits to be filed.

Attorneys for those arrested face a dilemma of sorts. Suits filed in state court are restricted to a maximum $250,000 in damages; those in federal court have no such limit, but require a higher level of proof, legal experts say.

The cost to taxpayers, they say, could run to the millions because of the number of people arrested without probable cause.

"It's difficult to predict a price tag," said Charles "Rocky" Rhodes, a professor at South Texas College of Law. "But I don't expect any astronomical awards, because jurors would be required to consider reasonable compensation."

New York, Chicago and other large cities have conducted similar sweeps, but direct comparisons are difficult because none resulted in such widespread arrests in which all charges were later dropped.

Not even when former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani ordered the highly publicized sweep of beggars and squeegee men preying on the city's motorists did such mass arrests occur.

"I've been in this office for 24 years, and it hasn't happened in that recent period of time," said Assistant District Attorney Anthony Communiello of the Queens County District Attorney's office in New York City. "Even in a sweep, you have to have evidence of the crime and not just arrest someone being on the street corner at the wrong time."

National civil rights leaders say the financial cost to taxpayers is only one repercussion of last month's arrests. An even higher cost may come in growing public distrust of law enforcement.

"Other cities, including Pittsburgh and Chicago, have also emulated these mass stops, mostly of young African-American men, and earlier curfews," said William Spriggs, the director of the National Urban League Institute for Opportunity and Equality in Washington, D.C. "But they are realizing how ineffective such actions are with the intensive manhours and no cases coming out of it.

"It's not so much the cost of litigation as it is a trust issue. It creates widespread distrust of police and convinces people that the system is biased."

The arrests in Houston were primarily of middle-income teens and young adults of all races, including many not usually considered victims of police abuse.

"We see all these ads about lawsuit abuse. But this is abuse of victims, not of the system," said Joe Sanchez, a state policy analyst for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund in San Antonio.

American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Randall Kallinen said he represents at least 20 people arrested in the Houston raids. He said he would likely file their suits in federal court because he is confident he can meet the higher standards for evidence by showing the city has maintained "zero tolerance" policies toward numerous problems since Brown was police chief in the mid-1990s.

Kallinen pointed to recurring drug sweeps in apartment complexes and prostitution and drug sweeps in the city's Third and Fifth wards as evidence of a pattern with the city's law enforcement.