Last night while dining at Baja Cantina (Cabo Cantina still sucks, yo! Go back to Manhattan Beach with all that!), we heard a ruckus caused by this:
We walked outside to see if we could help.
What we came across was some damn good police work.
As we would later learn, some twit in a white van (suspected of boozin’ too hard and being on heroin) had crashed into a whole bunch of cars while he tried to drive around Venice.
After smashing into the above cars he ripped across Washington at 40 mph or so and smashed into some parked cars by the canals.
When we arrived, there was a lone officer trying to appease this guy into getting out of his van, while the dimwit in the van had his foot on the gas and was burning rubber with his back tires while trying to escape.
In all seriousness, this one officer gives us all kinds of new respect for the L.A.P.D. While the van driver was trying to bash his way forward through cars in his feeble attempt at escape, the officer was calmly and methodically trying to get him out of the van. We looked at each other and said “should we help the cop”? but we figured the officer knew what he was doing and we didn’t feel like getting shot at last night.
Within a minute or two some more cops came and helped the original cop get the guy out of the van finally. The driver of the van was a real jerk and besides his trying to bash into cars, he was fighting with the police until they tasered his dumb ass. We are 100% not into violence around Yo! Venice!, but this guy needed a jolt of reality to be subdued.
Anyway, there are lots of reports on this in the news today, which you can read here here here and here.
As the first civilians on the scene, we can assure you that the first officer on scene, Sergeant Franklin, is a great guy to have around Venice protecting us. He was calm and collected in the face of a situation that was brutal to say the least. After the “perp” was in cuffs, the officer was amiable and modest to his fellow cops and to us.
Sergeant Franklin, thanks for having Venice as your beat and keeping all of us safe.
