Lots of excitement on Geneva Ave tonight. I had just finished a short
climbing skills practice session with a couple of friends and had
settled onto the couch to read up on Mt Shasta and watch a rerun of
"Two and a Half Men." In the corner of my eye I saw a police car pass
by the front window and slow to a stop. The it reversed briefly and
started flashing its lights. "Odd," I thought. "I didn't see a car zip
by really fast." So I get off the couch to see what's up.
There's a silver two door Caddy sitting right at the corner of our
lot and the officer from the police cruiser is approaching the car. He
has the driver get out of the car. A second police cruiser has parked
behind the first on our block. The driver gets out of the Caddy and
just gets clear of the door and then the dumbass decides to run. He
makes three steps before he trips on his own feet and then the two
officers tackle him. They wrestle for a couple of minutes and I
started to think that maybe the officers were getting a little rough;
as in violating civil rights rough. When the officers picked up the
driver and hauled him back to one of the police cars, then I see the
knife laying in the street. And it was a dagger-sized knife: six
inches of blade and a big cross guard.
By the time that the first occupant of the car had been detained
there were three more police cars on the street. The new officers
pulled the remaining two occupants of the Cadillac out of the car. The
officers checked the second guy for weapons extensively. He wore a big
baggy flannel and super baggy cargo pants. The police seemed very
intent on removing his belt; I couldn't see if it was one of the
belts with a knife blade built into the buckle.
The third occupant of the car, the only girl, sat on the curb in front
of the neighbor's house. She smoked and answered questions for the
cops. The police treated her much less roughly than the two guys.
Dev got home for the tail end of the festivities. The cops sped away
and a tow truck dragged off the Caddy. Plastic evidence bags held the
stashed drugs of the car's occupants. And we hit a quiet evening back.
I still wonder though why the driver ran. As soon as you take off the
cops know something is up. They know to look a lot more closely. They
know you ran for a reason.