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Mickey Kaus has posted a follow to my follow to my original post on his original post about a Halloween night gang fight on the border between Santa Monica and Brentwood. He still believes it happened, if somewhat less newsworthy than first reported. The Kausfiles update:
The L.A. Times tells Kevin Roderick's LAObserved that the police say the Halloween incident described above "didn't happen." I've now reinterviewed my source--an eyewitness who fled the scene for safety reasons--and while I don't have a complete picture I believe there was a gang rumble of some sort, involving dozens of people. The part in the above item that is wrong is the asumption that police were "called to the scene in force." Police were already heavy in the area, as you'd expect on Halloween. But there was apparently no mobilization of additional police or riot cops, no lights flashing, etc. ... I don't know what the police saw and what they didn't see. (My call to Santa Monica police press office hasn't been returned yet). It's hard to believe they'd miss gangbangers walking around with baseball bats. They might have missed fighting in the alleys. But just because the police don't respond doesn't mean nothing happened. And gangbangers terrorizing trick-or-treaters by fighting each other on Halloween in the heart of Brentwood is a story most Westside parents would want to know about, I should think--even if it's not a story you can get by just calling police headquarters. 2:09 P.M.
I'm sure the readers of Slate are mesmerized by all of this. Kausfiles today also has a believable analysis for why evening rush hour traffic seems so much heavier right after Daylight Saving time ends.