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Emeryville police have detained two men who boarded a public shuttle bus with real-looking handgun replicas yesterday afternoon, a police spokesman said.  The incident began at 3:43 p.m. when the Emeryville Police Department received a report of someone brandishing a gun at 40th and Watts streets, department spokesman Brian Head said. The suspect then boarded the free Emery Go Round shuttle.  A minute later, police spotted the bus and pulled it over at the corner of Hollis and 40th streets.  Seven police cars arrived on the scene, and officers pointed their guns at the bus as the roughly one dozen passengers exited one by one, walking backwards to the curb with their hands up.  Police conducted a pat search of each passenger and found that two men were concealing replica guns — one in a jacket and one in a backpack.  The guns looked “absolutely real,” Head said. “They’re pellet guns, but they’re made to look like actual working firearms that are brand-name.”  Head had no information about the relationship between the two men or what may have prompted the incident.  No arrests have been made. Head said police plan to speak to the victim who made the initial call in order to gather more information.

So in a recent post, I said that I had a pretty sh*tty day on the 18th, and if anyone spoke with me personally after 4:50 yesterday the 18th of January, I probably wasn’t in the best of moods.  On my way to finish one of my professional evaluations on campus, and the bus had stopped at a green light, and I was a bit perplexed.  I was sitting in the rear of the bus, with my back facing the curb, when I noticed 2 cop cars behind the bus, police behind their opened doors, and their guns drawn.  What ensued was one of the most hazardous and by far the most annoying afternoon of my life.

So rewind about 5 minutes, and I was in the rear of a bus in Emeryville that was being stopped as the police, sitting between four 18 year olds that were deliberating on who would take the wrap for toting a BB gun painted as a real pistol around 40th in Oakland.  Once they figured out that no one amongst them was willing to take the fall for what sounded like one person’s mistake, the entire bus looked around and realized that the cops were surrounding us, from all angles, (some were even hidden in the bushes).  For WHATEVER reason, the 4 who instigated the entire incident, still thought something was funny, and let out a few loud laughs as cops were closing in.  They threw whatever it was they had into a backpack, and were kicking it around between each other until the police forcefully let us know what it was they wanted.

A good samaritan came from the very rear of the bus, and decided to be the better person and give the police what the ‘suspects’ wouldn’t.  (Either that, or 17 cops with guns pointed at him, because he was nearest to the back window, made him want to just end the entire stand off.)   He had all weapons pointed towards him, and was instructed to put his hands up and walk towards the cops backwards.

At that point I thought the cops had what the wanted, and would let us get on our, but soon afterwards, everyone was instructed to do the exact same.  Every single passenger had to walk out, hands up with guns pointed at them, was searched, and handcuffed on the sidewalk.  An hour and 15 minutes later, there was a happy crowd of onlookers across the street that had grown tired of waiting for something exciting to happen, and traffic had resumed on the opposite side of the street.  

At the end of day, everyone on the bus was annoyed, frustrated, embarrassed, sick of the cops, but no one was hurt.  The whole ordeal was more of a pain in the ass than anything thing, especially because I personally was over an hour late for my professional evaluation… which wasn’t very professional.  But I’m hoping that after my professor reads this post, I’ll get those extra 30 points tacked back onto my final grade.