A Houston man who posted pictures of a police officer doing doughnuts in a parking lot blanketed with snow is crying foul after police posted photos showing his traffic violations.
Harmon Brown snapped the photos on Jan. 21 after the area received an almost unprecedented 5-1/2 inches of snow.
“Man look at HPD here, they out here doing doughnuts man, they got nothing else better to do,” Brown said in a video posted on Facebook that has been liked over 5,000 times.
The Texas Houston Police Union didn’t appreciate the reprimand, responding two days later on Facebook with a picture of Brown’s windshield, featuring a large crack covered in masking tape.
Drivers in Texas face fines if a crack in the windshield is larger than 3 inches or obstructs the driver’s view.
The union jokingly sought a financial sponsor for Brown to make the repair since “he didn’t get any Crime Stoppers money for s̷n̷i̷t̷c̷h̷i̷n̷g̷ tattling.”
Union president Doug Griffith defended the officer’s actions as a stress reliever.
“We are human. We like to have a good time just like they do,” Griffith told ABC 13 in Houston.
As for the union’s response to Brown, Griffith insisted there was no ill intent but acknowledged the back and forth had gone “off the rails a little bit.”
Brown was not amused, holding a press conference criticizing the union for putting him in the public eye, adding “he didn’t want no problems.”
“I ain’t really think it was going to go viral like it did,” Brown said. “Just leave me alone.”
Brown said the officers were having reckless fun — exactly what they told citizens not to do.
The police union followed up by posting a news clip of Brown’s presser along with a warning, “Never post anything on the internet you don’t want to see on the news … or the internet.”
They then shared footage of Brown hopping out of a moving car on a busy street and climbing onto the windshield, where he proceeded to “ghost ride” the vehicle as an ambulance raced by.
“Remember Hamon Brown? The hater that went on the news to run his mouth about police cars in the snow (in a parking lot)? #DontBeAHater #ComingDine #GotEeem,” the union wrote in a post on Jan. 26.
Griffith said he doesn’t think apologies are in order for exposing Brown’s hypocrisy.
“You can’t do what he does in public and then go and call out others,” he said.
Brown said he’s worried police are out to get him.
“It is really messing with me because ya’ll posting all my business on social media, ya’ll are doing a lot to me and getting me real scared,” Brown said. “I ain’t did nothing wrong. Ya’ll were in the wrong.”
Griffith assured Brown he wouldn’t worry about retaliation.
“We don’t go out there hunting people for complaining about police officers,” he said. “That is not what we do.”
But Kimberly Dodson, a criminology professor at the University of Houston Clear Lake, said the union’s responses were inappropriate and might deter citizens from reporting more serious incidents of police misconduct.
“Citizens see that and they are less likely to take the police seriously,” she said. “They are trying to be dismissive of their behavior by saying the young men were doing something similar, but do two wrongs make a right?”
Griffith said the officers have been their actions were wrong, though they won’t be punished.
“It has been taken care of, and for the public to worry about complaining about police officers, there is no concern there,” he said. “You can complain all you want.”
