ERACER = INEPT

The Houston Press finally addresses the K-Mart/Sonic/James Coney Island raids. Here's a teaser:

So basically what we have here is this scenario:

People got thrown in jail because they picked the wrong night and place to do their shopping and get a burger. (Some were probably there hoping to watch a little racing, although technically this isn't a crime.)

Despite years of legal training and fieldwork, the officers who arrested all those people didn't know they might be stepping all over probable cause.

One captain may have single-handedly commanded the biggest mass violation of human rights in terms of one night's arrests this city has ever seen.

The police chief of the fourth-largest city in the country steps out for a week of special training and apparently is so alienated from his department that no one tells him what's going on and he learns about it on TV.

Bradford misses any heads-up even though word of the raid is broadcast over every police scanner in town that night. And even though there were 25 people arrested the night before.

Dysfunctional, yes. Believable? In a pig's eye (if you'll pardon the expression).

Definitely go read. Margaret Downing also explains, for the first time that I've seen, what the name of the raid mission, ERACER, stands for: Eliminate and Remove Autos Causing Environmental Ravagement.

That's so goofy it really doesn't need further comment.

[Posted at 22:23 CST on 09/04/02] [Link]