The armed, alert and vigilant manager of an Oakland liquor store almost got smoked by police for preventing a robbery. They detained him a while for waving a gun around but because nobody in California ever gets prosecuted for anything, they let him go to clean up the mess at his shop.
Manager gets busted
U&I Liquor on Telegraph Avenue took a while picking up the pieces following a break in that happened early morning. Even at 7 a.m., the unnamed manager “was armed and ready when intruders showed up.”
As soon as the alarm went off he had a gun in his hand. He promptly used it to scare two suspects back through the shattered front window. The robbery wasn’t a surprise.
According to longtime customer Daniel Avina, “last week this happened so somebody broke his window and he was expecting them to come back. He was ready like a good Oakland resident should be.”
The manager feels like part of the family who owns the business. He chuckled when he described how the two thugs were so scared when he chased them out that they dropped the keys to the getaway car.
Reports don’t say what his weapon of choice was but it must have been pretty impressive. The manager notes that before they took off running, he was within five feet of the suspects.
He could have easily dropped them but “chose not to fire his weapon.” Cops showed up about then and he was the only one in the vicinity waving a dangerous weapon around. He’s lucky they gave him a chance to explain.
Don’t aim at a cop car
After chasing the two intruders away, and fearing there might be more inside, the manager trained his weapon on the store. When he saw a passing California Highway Patrol cruiser, he “waved his gun for help.”
Big mistake. He was soon “detained in handcuffs in the cruiser and later passed on to the Oakland police department.” About an hour later they turned him loose.
Police gave their side of the story to a local news outlet, noting the Oakland PD dispatcher “received multiple reports of an individual armed with a firearm standing in the street in the 4800 block of Telegraph Avenue.”
That would be the manager. The criminals were long gone by then. “When officers arrived, they safely detained the armed individual and later learned that he was the owner of a business at the scene.”
His customer was a little miffed at the way his favorite liquor supplier was handled. “I think they should have done a little bit more talking to, when you know in that situation, he’s a Temescal staple.” The manager, Avina relates, has “been here for so long and been very good with the community and people that come into the shop know that.”
Another regular, Travis Vincej, adds, “his personality is like that. He’s sort of like a strong-willed individual. He’s here pretty much morning and night, morning and night.” The lawless anarchy seems to be spreading he notes. “I feel like the safety has been breaking down just like everywhere throughout Oakland. I mean it’s just kind of like, post-COVID, kind of a free-for-all.“