Tag: houston

Houston PD Criticized For Agonizing Over Church Shooter’s Correct Pronouns

The Houston Police Department received criticism for agonizing over the culprit’s correct pronouns after an attempted mass shooting inside Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church.

Authorities identified the shooter as Genesse Ivonne Moreno, who previously used the name Jeffrey Escalante Moreno.

Moreno, who it was initially suspected could have been transgender, was accompanied by a 7-year-old child for whom she was the biological mother.

The child and another 57-year-old man were the only people injured in the shooting, which was quickly stopped by armed off-duty police officers who killed the suspect.

During a press conference, Houston PD announced, “She’d utilized both male and female names, but through all of our investigation to this point, talking with individuals, interviews, documents, Houston Police Department reports she has been identified this entire time as female – she her – and so we are identifying her as Genesse Moreno – hispanic female.”

Elon Musk responded, accusing the police of having “Seriously messed up priorities.”

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Shooter at Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church Stopped by Good Guy with Gun

A shooter at Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas, was reportedly stopped by a Harris County Sheriff’s deputy working security at the church Sunday morning.

Update: Around 4 p.m. Central Time ABC News reported that Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez “corrected an earlier statement claiming it was a sheriff’s deputy that fired the shot.” Gonzalez now says the shooter was stopped when “other agencies fired.”

Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez responded to news of the shooting with an X post saying, “It is believed that a possible shooter is down, shot by one of our deputy’s on-scene. I’m enroute to the scene.”

Click2Houston reported the shooter allegedly opened fire in the church lobby. The outlet noted that witnesses indicated “the shooter was possibly a female.”

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Facial recognition used after Sunglass Hut robbery led to man’s wrongful jailing, says suit

A 61-year-old man is suing Macy’s and the parent company of Sunglass Hut over the stores’ alleged use of a facial recognition system that misidentified him as the culprit behind an armed robbery and led to his wrongful arrest. While in jail, he was beaten and raped, according to his suit.

Harvey Eugene Murphy Jr was accused and arrested on charges of robbing a Houston-area Sunglass Hut of thousands of dollars of merchandise in January 2022, though his attorneys say he was living in California at the time of the robbery. He was arrested on 20 October 2023, according to his lawyers.

According to Murphy’s lawsuit, an employee of EssilorLuxottica, Sunglass Hut’s parent company, worked with its retail partner Macy’s and used facial recognition software to identify Murphy as the robber. The image that was put through the facial recognition system came from low-quality cameras, according to the lawsuit. While Houston police department was investigating the armed robbery, the EssilorLuxottica employee called police to say they could stop the investigation because the employee had identified one of two robbers with the technology. The employee also said the system had pointed to Murphy as committing two other robberies, according to the lawsuit.

When Murphy returned to Texas from California, he went to the department of motor vehicles (DMV) to renew his license. Within minutes of identifying himself to a DMV clerk, Murphy told the Guardian he was approached by a police officer who notified him there was a warrant out for his arrest for an aggravated robbery. Murphy said he was not told any details about his supposed crime except for the date the robbery occurred. He realized he was in Sacramento, California, at the time of the robbery – more than a thousand miles away.

“I almost thought it was a joke,” Murphy said.

Still, he was arrested and taken to the local county jail, where he was held for 10 days before being transferred to and processed in Harris county jail.

After a few days at Harris county, his alibi was confirmed by both his court-appointed defense attorney and the prosecutor, and the charges against him were ultimately dropped, according to the lawsuit.

Murphy was never convicted of a crime. Nonetheless, he says his detainment left him with deep scars. He was brutally beaten and gang-raped by three other men in the jail hours before he was released, he alleges. They threatened to kill him if he tried to report them to the jail staff, according to Murphy. After the alleged attack, Murphy remained in the same cell as them until he was released.

“That was kind of terrifying,” Murphy said. “Your anxiety is up so high, you’re still shaking the entire time. And I just got up on my bunk and just faced the wall and was just praying that something would come through and get me out of that tank.”

“The attack left him with permanent injuries that he has to live with every day of his life,” the lawsuit reads. “All of this happened to Murphy because the Defendants relied on facial recognition technology that is known to be error prone and faulty.”

Murphy did not realize facial recognition technology may have been used as evidence against him until two weeks ago, when he began working with his attorney, Daniel Dutko.

Dutko said he discovered from police documents that the Sunglass Hut worker shared camera footage with Macy’s, which employees from the department store chain used to identify Murphy. After that, Macy’s and Sunglass Hut contacted the police together, according to Dutko. Though Macy’s has retail partnerships with the eyewear brand in several locations, Macy’s had no connection to this robbery as the Sunglass Hut in question is a standalone location, he said.

“We feel very comfortable saying facial recognition software is the only possible explanation, and it’s the only reason why [Sunglass Hut] would go to Macy’s to try to identify him,” Dutko said.

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Houston black Muslim activist accused of GoFundMe hoax showed off travel, weaves and designer clothes

A black female Muslim activist who went viral online for making claims that she had been assaulted by a man with a brick in Houston has been accused of raising thousands in a GoFundMe scam. On her TikTok profile, she shows off designer clothes and weaves. 

Roda Osman, 33, was charged with theft by deception after she raised over $42,000 with a fraudulent GoFundMe page online after claiming she was hit by a man with a brick while walking on Schumacher Lane in Houston, Texas. 

After the alleged scam took place, she has been posting videos to TikTok of her going on vacations to Jamaica and showing off designer clothes and weaves.

The since-deleted GoFundMe page stated, “My good friend Roda was viciously attacked with a brick by a man she refused to give her number. She was surrounded by onlookers who stood by and did nothing to help her – not even calling an ambulance. The video is now viral all over Twitter, IG, and TikTok.” 

“Roda is a single mother and student. She is a beautiful person who is always there for others,” the GoFundMe page goes on. “Because of this vicious attack she will have to manage hospital bills, therapy, and time away from work, school and childcare while she heals mentally and physically. Unfortunately, no one stepped in to help her that night – it would mean so much if we could step up and help her as she heals.” 

The GoFundMe linked to a video posted to Instagram, in which Osman said a man hit her in the head with a brick and the other men “just watch[ed]” the event happen. She appears to have a large contusion on the side of her face in the video. She said the reason for the supposed assault was because she wouldn’t give him her phone number.  

In a video uploaded to her TikTok for her trip to Jamaica, she says, “Four months ago, when this incident happened, I was afraid to check my mailbox,” Osman said. “I didn’t think that I could ever go out by myself.”

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Houston Police Arrested an Animal Rights Protester and Detained Him for 16 Hours, Lawsuit Says

Animal rights activists Daraius Dubash and Faraz Harsini were peacefully demonstrating in a Houston, Texas, public park when park employees demanded they leave. When Dubash insisted that the pair had a First Amendment right to protest, officials called the police, who arrested Dubash and charged him with criminal trespass. 

While Dubash’s charge was eventually dismissed, the pair have now filed a First Amendment lawsuit against the city, arguing that city police clearly violated their Constitutional rights.

“No one should be handcuffed and detained for exercising his First Amendment rights,” said JT Morris, an attorney for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a First Amendment nonprofit group. “We’re suing because public parks belong to all Americans and their expressive rights, not the personal views of a few.” 

From April to July 2022, Dubash and Harsini demonstrated several times in Discovery Green, a Houston public park. According to their lawsuit, the pair—keeping in practice with Anonymous for the Voiceless, the animal-rights activist group the two pertained to—wore Guy Fawkes masks while playing clips from Dominion, a documentary showing the gruesome mistreatment of animals in factory farms. 

On three separate occasions, park employees asked the pair to leave the park, claiming that the park was private property. (Discovery Green is public property, though it is managed by a private company.) According to the complaint, the pair complied, fearing retaliation.

On July 23, 2022, Dubash and Harsini were approached again. This time, they refused to leave, and Dubash calmly told park employees that he had a right to demonstrate peacefully. However, a park security guard told Dubash that protests were allowed on a “case by case” basis, adding that his “manager is going to come and come look at it.”

According to the lawsuit, when the manager, Floyd Willis, arrived, Dubash informed him that, while the park was managed by a private conservancy, the park was still public property, meaning that the First Amendment applied.

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HOUSTON FORCES PRIVATE BUSINESSES TO INSTALL 24/7 CITYWIDE DIGITAL SURVEILLANCE CAMERAS FOR WARRANTLESS ACCESS BY POLICE

The Rutherford Institute is calling on the City of Houston to address glaring constitutional concerns relating to a recently adopted ordinance that requires private businesses to install citywide digital surveillance cameras that can be accessed by police without a search warrant. The Exterior Security Cameras Ordinance, adopted by the Houston City Council on April 20, 2022, requires private businesses to purchase and install digital surveillance cameras that carry out round-the-clock, citywide surveillance on the populace while “allowing” police to access the footage at any time, for any reason, and without the need of a court-issued warrant. In a letter to the Houston City Council, Rutherford Institute attorneys warn that the City’s thinly veiled attempt to evade oversight and accountability for Fourth Amendment violations by forcing a quasi-private/public arrangement on private businesses regarding the ownership and governance of digital surveillance cameras will not likely hold up to judicial scrutiny.

“By placing the burden of round-the-clock, citywide surveillance on private businesses, the City of Houston is clearly attempting an end-run around the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement as it relates to surveillance by government officials,” said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of Battlefield America: The War on the American People. “This kind of warrantless, citywide surveillance program inevitably gives rise to a suspect society in which the burden of proof is reversed so that guilt is assumed and innocence must be proven.”

On April 20, 2022, the Houston City Council passed an ordinance ostensibly aimed at addressing “an increase of violent crimes due to the pandemic, social anxiety and economic uncertainty, open carry law and a strained criminal justice system resulting in a criminal backlog of cases.” The Exterior Security Cameras Ordinance requires certain private businesses (all bars, nightclubs, sexually-oriented businesses, convenience stores and game rooms inside city limits) to work in consultation with the Houston Police Department in order to install digital surveillance cameras that record the exterior property areas at all times. Business owners must bear the costs of the cameras, ensure the cameras are in proper working order, maintain recordings for at least 30 days, and provide video footage within 72 hours to police upon their request without a search warrant. The Ordinance is slated to take effect mid-July. Failure to comply with the Ordinance is a punishable offense for business owners with fines up to $500 per day. However, as The Rutherford Institute warns, by lodging the responsibility for the cameras with private businesses, the City is proceeding as if it is not bound by the warrant requirements of the Fourth Amendment, giving police carte blanche access to the surveillance footage from these digital cameras. Consequently, the Ordinance does not require a judge or magistrate to confirm that the police demand for video footage is supported by probable cause of criminal activity under oath, it does not limit the scope of the video footage which can be requested by the police in order to prevent obtaining extra and unnecessary video footage, and it does not require the crime to be violent or even serious in relation to the Ordinance’s stated goal of reducing violent crime. The Ordinance also fails to limit the use and further dissemination of the video footage by the police.

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