I had a friend of mine who was once arrested on a complete and total accident for lack of a better term.
He had just had a baby and got a frantic call from his wife about something to do with their child and he walked out of a grocery store with something small that he just plain forgot he had in his hand.
The manager and security people had him arrested even though the police said that it was a load of nonsense given the circumstances. He later had the charges dropped once their corporate office got involved but I remember he had to put up a good deal of money to get out of jail that he didn’t get back for nearly a year.
Dijon Landrum of Monterey Park, California doesn’t seem to be taking stay-at-home advice seriously. In the days of old, that would be the least of his concerns.
When I talk about the days of old, I’m referring to that authoritarian period in American life when we actually thought a whole lot of crimes merited time behind bars.
Coronavirus has changed all of this. Thus, this means a whole lot of convicted criminals are spending this time at home, like the rest of us, thanks to the fact they’ve been released into the community to prevent the spread of coronavirus in prisons and jails. Well, at least we hope they’re spending this time at home.
In the case of accused criminals, this means states have also been a lot more lenient as to who spends time behind bars. In California, officials have implemented a zero-cash bail policy, which means those accused of misdemeanors and felonies deemed minor by the state are let free.
“In the first 30 days of the [no-cash bail] policy, the Los Angeles Police Department has arrested 213 individuals multiple times, with 23 being arrested three or more times,” the Los Angeles Times reported last Thursday. “They account for about 5% of all of those booked on misdemeanors or felonies, records show.”
I’ll say this for most of those arrested three or more times, though: They weren’t arrested three times in the same day.
That’s what makes Dijon Landrum special. According to a Facebook post by the Glendora Police Department, in a period of just over 12 hours, the 24-year-old Landrum received a trifecta of citations in the city, which is located about a 30-minutes drive from Los Angeles.
“On Wednesday, April 29th, at about 8:28 a.m., our officers responded to a call of a male who was attempting to break into a vehicle in the 1400 block of South Grand Ave. When we arrived, we contacted Dijon Landrum, M/24, from Monterey Park, as he was attempting to drive away in a stolen vehicle,” the department said.
That vehicle was stolen from East Los Angeles, so one assumes it was different from the one he was allegedly trying to break into. He was also allegedly in possession of stolen property and narcotics which — well, who knows? Dealers and users aren’t usually known to report these things.