SFist Blotter

The city of Fremont has decided that to save money, police will no longer respond to burglar alarms unless there's some sort of evidence that a crime is underway. On the one hand, only about 1% of all burglar alarms are for legitimate crime, Fremont's spending almost $700,000 a year responding to them, they've already cut all other police expenses, and only 20% of the city even has alarms. On the other, you imagine a number of people wearing black catsuits and black knitted caps tiptoeing around Fremont with bulky packages under their arms and violin strings plucking in the background. (We know it makes sense to cut the alarm budget, but we can't help it, that's what we think of!)

And finally, the cops caught the guy who held up two teachers at Visitacion Middle School in the city at gunpoint while wearing a rainbow clown wig and an orange safety patrol vest. (That is so insult to injury.) The gunman was already in custody in San Mateo County on unrelated charges.

Update: Newly-breaking crime news so entertaining that we bumped the original first entry off the top (a brothel in Concord) to make room. San Francisco firefighters rushing to a small garage fire on 20th Avenue between Taraval and Santiago last night found 2000 pot plants in the otherwise-abandoned apartment. The heat lamps for the plants caused the fire, and it took the police two and a half hours to take all the cheeba out. Investigation's ongoing.