A Switchblade Knife
Monday, April 30 at 2:20 p.m. – OPCC Access Center at 1616 7th Street – In keeping with the nonprofit’s policy of checking backpacks when persons come in to the Access Center, OPCC personnel began to search a transient gentleman’s bags, and he became agitated, pulled away, said “Don’t f— with me” and such, and then pulled a knife from his pocket (not from the bag). He opened the knife, and OPCC called the police. Responding officers detained the gentleman in the 700 block of Taft Way (that’s an east-west alley near 7th Street and Colorado Avenue), and he was arrested and booked for possession of a deadly weapon – a switchblade knife – a misdemeanor violation of Penal Code section 653k (“Every person who…carries upon his or her person…a switchblade knife having a blade two or more inches in length is guilty of a misdemeanor.”)
A Potted Plant
Saturday, April 28 at 9:50 p.m. – 2600 block of Pico Boulevard – A man sitting on a bus bench was approached by two juvenile males who asked what gang he was from. He answered that he didn’t belong to any gang and then ran across the street to elude the two (Suspects). The Suspects chased him into the 2200 block of 26th Street, where they caught up with him and began punching him in the head. He fell, and they took a potted plant and hit him in the head with it. The Suspects took the man’s money, cigarettes and watch, and fled. Officers responding to the call observed and detained two juvenile males in the 2500 block of Kansas Avenue. The victim identified the Suspects in a field show-up, and they were arrested and booked for robbery and for assault with a deadly weapon.
An Unmarked Crosswalk
Elsewhere in today’s Mirror is the tragic story of a man who was hit by a car and killed while crossing 4th Street in what the police described as “an unmarked crosswalk.” Lest you think that this is a cop-talk oxymoron, Vehicle Code section 275 defines “crosswalk” – sandwiched between the statutory definitions of “crib sheet” and “darkness” – as both “(a) That portion of a roadway included within the prolongation or connection of the boundary lines of sidewalks at intersections where the intersecting roadways meet at approximately right angles,…” and “(b) Any portion of a roadway distinctly indicated for pedestrian crossing by lines or other markings on the surface.” Vehicle Code section 21950(a) specifically requires a driver to “yield the right-of-way to a pedestrian crossing the roadway within any marked crosswalk or within any unmarked crosswalk at an intersection,…”
