This was the view from my living room window (I was the creepy neighbor with the camera lens through the blinds) yesterday morning as the Long Beach Police Department shut down 5th Street between Lime and Olive for two hours and tried to lure a “David” out of the house across the street from me:

I got off work at 5:30am (graveyard’s a bitch) and pulled into a parking spot. As I was walking up the front steps of my building, three cop cars without their lights on speed down the street, the roar of their engines piercing the early morning silence. They slam on their brakes in front of my place and I notice more cars doing things on the other side of the block, near Stevenson Elementary School. They cocked their shotguns as they got out of their cars and I slid into my apartment, hoping for another early morning domestic dispute call.

An hour and a half later they got on the loudspeaker, commanded “David of 703 E. 5th St.” to “come out with his hands up.” That’s when I sat on my couch to wait it out. More cars had showed up, including a K-9 unit and an Explorer with what my tired eyes thought was a bazooka mounted on top (see below). Stevenson and St. Anthony students were held at the police line at the end of the block and anyone trying to walk out their front door was immediately told to stay inside by one of the 50+ officers that lined the sidewalk and alley.

After another 45 minutes of standing around with their guns pointed at the house, they filed in the front gate. I listened to the radio of the guy posted outside my window as the men inside cleared the downstairs, upstairs and then the basement. “David” wasn’t there. The barricade was let down and my busy downtown block was open to the public.

A sigh of relief washed over everyone, but as the machine-gun wielding, helmet-clad officers walked down the street to their respective cars, I couldn’t help but be awed by the surreal scene that lay before me. A real life Reservoir Dogs poster marching down 5th Street; surrounded by throngs of young children running to get to school.

Tags: barricade, lbpd, reservoir dogs, stand off, stevenson elementary school