Well, we suppose this is sort of like those Portraits In Grief type thumbnail portraits of murder victims we suggested to the Chron -- yesterday's paper featured a long article about Allan Broussard, a serial car burglar who was shot to death last month. He was shot clutching a car stereo he'd just stolen. A suspect has been arrested in the case, who has a long rap sheet of his own, but the cops won't say if the suspect's car was the one that had been burgled.

And hey -- so we were just getting out of dinner and drinks with Chron webmistress Eve Batey and SFist Rain on Wednesday when not one, not two, not three, but cop cars went speeding by us at 16th and Valencia, nearly hitting a bunch of people trying to make left turns onto either 16th or Valencia (don't cut off the cop cars, people!) before screeching to a halt in the middle of the block near 15th. We haven't been able to find anything about it online, so we figured we'd ask: anyone know what the heck was going on?

And your obligatory wacky item: that naked carpenter in Oakland was acquitted of public indecency charges -- while they agreed it was a little weird that he was doing construction work in the nude, the judge decided he wasn't doing anything unseemly besides just being naked at the time. The carpenter, through his lawyer, says he's probably going to start wearing clothes now, just to avoid the bother of having to go to court again. (We posted on this as a Blotter item when the guy was originally arrested in Oct. 2005, but cannot for the life of us find the article now! Sorry.)

Picture of 16th and Valencia by Francisco Cendejas, off flickr.

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