We’ve addressed the issue of petty theft tying up resources and leading to street arrests in the 24/680 recently, with readers offering photos and unintentionally funny accounts of police activity often as it rolls over them.
It’s difficult enough to get a focused, well-composed photograph of your cat or favorite potted plant, but street crime appears to have gotten so prevalent recently that civilians have managed to capture images of incidents as they happen. 
Yesterday, Friday, we received a series of text messages and emails from readers/neighbors caught up in the arrest of one of a pair of suspected shoplifters outside the Lafayette Bank of America branch. Their real-time descriptions of the arrests pretty much captured the drama of the moment as a small, well-armed squad of police officers descended on the suspect’s car and, as always, we were grateful for the tip on something developing within our area of coverage.
It can be a mind-bending experience for someone caught up in it and we were impressed to see that our readers even took time to self-edit their “f-bombs” with well-positioned $$!* punctuation while trying to reach us. So, thanks for that. We are gentle souls sensitive to vulgarity and we know the whole thing was unexpected and you were caught off guard.
We’ve gotten more than a few photos of incidents on our streets lately and, while we always appreciate them for their news value, we hasten to remind folks not to jeopardize your safety in hope of getting a photo.
So what was happening out by Lunardis last night?
Its the weather.
We’re not letting it push us indoors but there is definitely a lot more activity out there lately.
I live around the corner from the Salvation Army store above. It is a magnet for the homeless, who remove items that are left overnight for the charity. The building owner does not do anything to remove or deter people who are passed out in front of the store at all hours. Pleasant Hill PD are simply playing whack-a-mole. With all due respect to the photographer of the top photo, there’s nothing unique about seeing cops at that store, and it’s often hard to tell exactly what “crime” has been committed (which is why I don’t call the police to report this – they have serious work to do).