People and Events

Gardena cops are still talking about the bust that Skystone Eagle Lambert, a Santa Monica police officer, made in their jurisdiction the other day.

Lambert, 34, was off duty and about to enter a bank at 147th Street and Crenshaw Boulevard when he spotted a young man in a heavy black jacket parking a bicycle in the alley.

It was a warm day, which seemed to make the jacket out of place. In addition, the bike was pointed toward the street as if for a fast getaway.

Lambert went inside and confided his suspicions to a manager. At almost the same time, he saw the man confront a teller and abruptly charge out the front door onto Crenshaw. The teller had just been robbed of about $800.

Lambert strolled out a side door and was waiting with his service revolver when the suspect, identified as Omar King, 21, came around the corner to get his bike. As King was not armed, it was no contest.

“A good job,” Gardena Detective John Davila said of Lambert’s work. “Exemplary.”

Lambert purportedly also works as a bodyguard for actor Sylvester Stallone.

Rambo has a bodyguard?

“That’s what I understand,” said Santa Monica Sgt. Barney Malekian.

Being a lawyer, Peter de Krassel’s threatened to file suit for false imprisonment, assault and battery, denial of due process and infliction of emotional distress when authorities refused to release Nikolai pending a hearing.

Nikolai is De Krassel’s 12-year-old dog, part German shepherd short hair and part Dalmatian. He had been locked up at the West Los Angeles Animal Shelter since he was picked up last Saturday on the complaint of a Pacific Palisades neighbor who said Nikolai had attacked her dog.

Lt. Linda Gordon of the Los Angeles City Department of Animal Regulation said the neighbor had been complaining for months that Nikolai was running loose.

And so De Krassel took on a new client.

“Why is a dog presumed guilty until proven innocent?” he asked. “At least he should be allowed to post bail and be released until the hearing.”

On Thursday, De Krassel took about 10 of his friends (three of whom brought their own dogs) to picket outside the animal shelter. Authorities say it was a coincidence that Nikolai was released to the custody of his owner a few minutes later.

Although De Krassel promised to keep the dog locked up or on a leash, he insisted, “Nikolai would not hurt a flea.”

It is not yet certain that a 16-foot-tall fuchsia kangaroo and a 28-foot whale will continue to campaign against incumbent Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich now that the primary race is over.

“I would think so,” Agoura sculptor John Perry said Thursday. “But I have been trying to get in touch with Baxter Ward to see if he wants whales and kangaroos involved in his campaign. He might think it’s too frivolous.”

Both the kangaroo and the whale are inflatable and were created several years ago by Perry--one to protest the slaughter of kangaroos in Australia and the other for Save the Whale rallies.

The two have been used in numerous protests on behalf of conservationist causes, making their recent appearances on behalf of the Coalition for Planned Growth and Responsive Government--which included six of the nine candidates who opposed Antonovich.

Ward, who managed to get into a runoff with Antonovich, never officially joined the coalition.

There was no immediate comment Thursday from Antonovich’s campaign manager, Roger Scott. During the primary, however, he said it was “typical of the gang of nine . . . to parade out that silly kangaroo” because they had no real issue.

More from the political front:

John Mitchell, who lives on the Westside, has not quite recovered from the chagrin he felt when he took his 10-year-old son, Johnny, to a Jesse Jackson rally here. Mitchell, being black, thought it would be an experience the boy would remember for the rest of his life.

They even had seats in the first row.

But when candidate Jackson mentioned Michael Dukakis, Johnny shot a fist in the air and shouted, “Yea!”

Mitchell, feeling the stares of the crowd, hunkered down and suggested to his son that silence would be advisable.

He shouldn’t have been surprised, he said later. “I like the Lakers. He likes the Celtics.”