You would think Oakland cops had better things to do than arrest frail elderly people who are sorting through trash and trying to make a few nickels by collecting cans and bottles. But, apparently, that was not the case last Saturday night when police had to respond to a "citizen's arrest" of a 70-year-old Chinese-speaking man who was doing just that. And they incarcerated him. And because he couldn't speak any English or ask for a phone call, his family thought he'd gone missing.

A friend of SFist alerted us to the situation saying:

I'd really like to give a piece of my mind to the unknown neighbor who called OPD to make a citizens arrest of one of our hood's nicest recycling collectors ... Since the ancient man has no ID and can't spell his name for the officer, OPD can't just give him a citation and get back to work. No. Instead OPD has to take him downtown to fingerprint him. The cop literally just asked me if I could store the old man's push cart for him.

The cops had no name to put on the citation, and no way of recording him in the system, so when his family tried to figure out what happened they were told the police had no record of the arrest. A couple of days later the Missing poster above showed up on neighborhood lampposts, which explained that the 70-year-old missing man only speaks TaiShanese. Allegedly, according to police, the man was carrying a makeshift trash-sorting stick with a prong on the end that "looked scary," and this was something mentioned by the arresting citizen. He was taken and held on $5,000 bond at Santa Rita County Jail on some alleged "assault" charge.

Thankfully, after a court hearing on Wednesday, the man was released into the custody of his family, but HOW RIDICULOUS IS THIS? Sure, stealing recycling is a crime and results in citations. But really, people? Five days behind bars for an elderly man? Awesome job with those quality-of-life crimes, OPD.

Update: An official report from the police describes the alleged assault that the citizen described to police on November 9.

Our officer was called by a citizen who claimed [the man, mistakenly referred to here as "Mr. Yu"] was dumping garbage on the street while looking for cans and bottles in a dumpster. When the citizen confronted him and asked him to put the garbage back in the dumpster, "Mr. Yu" allegedly attacked him with the stick he had. The citizen insisted on a citizen' s arrest and the officer took "Mr. Yu" into custody. The officer, who speaks Chinese, was trying to get enough information from "Mr. Yu" to write him a citation for the assault, but was unable to identify him sufficiently, so he was required by policy to transport him to the jail to be fingerprinted. The officer tried for over 20 minutes to use our law enforcement data systems to identify him, but was unable to based on the information provided by "Mr. Yu". The officer even went so far as to ask two concerned citizens who stopped to ask what was going on if they knew "Mr. Yu" or where he lived. Apparently, he told the officer he was homeless and did not provide him with an address to check.

Apparently the entire incident was recorded by the officer's audio/video recorder.