* A tense situation in progress as I am writing this. About 10 PM this evening, LAPD officers exchanged gunfire with three street gang members not far from where I live, which I will not divulge here for safety purposes of course. I was going to head out with a friend until I heard numerous gunshots to the east of where I am -- on Figueroa Street near Vernon Avenue -- that were shades of North Hollyood from 1997. Once I turned the scanner on, I heard one unit request help, and shots fired. Yikes. As you might expect, about a dozen LAPD officers and two air units raced to the scene, with four suspects involved, one of them shot and the other three fleeing the area and hiding at an apartment complex. LAPD as a result had to shut Figueroa down at Vernon for Southbound traffic and at 47th Street for northbound traffic. CHP also had to run a traffic break both directions of the Harbor Freeway between MLK and Slauson, so that caused major headaches for the commuters on the freeway.

Now, at 11:16 PM, over an hour after the shooting, it appears that LAPD has two guys apprehended which may have been involved in the officer-involved shooting. One other suspect was shot and taken to a nearby local hospital; condition unknown at this time. There is still an Air unit flying overhead, and K-9, SWAT and Gang-unit detectives on scene as well. So far no changes. Well, it's still going as of 11:27 PM, so this situation is gonna last for a while I'm afraid.

Now 11:31, I have just heard on the CHP frequency that a SigAlert has been issued on the 110 Freeway between MLK and Slauson for four hours due to the police activity going on at Vernon and Fig. So this is gonna last well into the early morning hours.

************************************************************************************

You have to feel for the folks on the San Diego Freeway. Earlier today, a crane smashed right onto the freeway near Mulholland Drive, which forced the closure of the entire freeway for a time, and the northbound lanes were out for a good four or five hours. As of this writing, traffic on the 405 is STILL very slow, under 15 MPH. The surface roads nearby such as Sepulveda Blvd, Beverly Glen, Laurel Canyon and Coldwater Canyon are slammed, as you might expect. Laurel may be the lesser of the two, since that road is near the Hollywood Freeway. Glad I wasn't there.

***********************************************************************************

Birthday wishes go out to a longtime friend whom I've known for the past 25 years; Shawn Hutchings. Shawn and I were classmates at Eldorado High School in Las Vegas (she was known at the time as Shawn Arnold, the eldest of the five Arnold siblings), and became very good friends over the years. Shawn is among that special group of people who were given a second chance to live. Back in 1985, on my 18th birthday of all things, she was involved in a near-fatal car accident in Henderson when someone blew a stop sign right onto Boulder Highway...in oncoming traffic. Shawn was out of action for a year as a result, yet good people like her now-husband Alan, her sister and brothers and everyone else in her family, were there for her in that difficult time. I didn't know of this until a year later; and to this day I have no clue why nobody told me about this when it occurred. I drove by this accident when I was going to a basketball game at Basic High School.

***********************************************************************************

Super Bowl predictions? Gonna go with Chicago. Not a fan of the Colts, either the Baltimre Colts or the Indianapolis Colts, yet I admired Johnny Unitias and the leadership he had with the Baltimore Colts, and was very vocal about the team's sudden decision to move to Indy.

************************************************************************************

Enjoy the Super Bowl weekend, everybody!

RD