Police blunder startles mother, daughter

By ANNE LINDBERG
Published March 28, 2007

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PINELLAS PARK - Shonda Aires bought a Diet Pepsi at the Walgreens on Sunday night. Then she left the store with her daughter, Simone Barnes, 13.

"Before I knew it, two cops were on the side of us demanding that we stop," Aires said. "They had the guns pointed at us. ... I didn't even think a gun of that size existed."

Aires and her daughter were ordered to get against the wall and be quiet. "So that's what we did," Aires said. "I thought they would have shot me if we hadn't done it."

The Pinellas Park police officers spoke into their radios and, without explaining, left Aires and Simone standing against the wall.

It turns out the officers, who had received a report about a woman with a gun, were at the wrong Walgreens.

And they should have been looking for a white woman. Aires and her daughter are black.

"There's no mistaking my race," said Aires, 35, a Seminole resident and customer service representative for Progress Energy.

Pinellas Park police Capt. Mike Haworth confirmed Tuesday that the department made mistakes.

Officers were told to go to the Walgreens at 66th Street N and 102nd Avenue, he said. They had a report that a "distraught" white woman had threatened to shoot employees at the store. Two police cars were dispatched. One went to the correct Walgreens. The other headed to the Walgreens at Park Boulevard and 66th Street, where Aires and her daughter were shopping.

Haworth said officers who had gone to the correct Walgreens did find the woman, but she had no gun and wasn't arrested. He said the department opened an internal affairs investigation after Aires filed a complaint. "We will certainly take that complaint seriously," Haworth said.

Aires, who has never been arrested, said she was horrified. "I can't even express the fear that we had," she said.