California IN BRIEF : SANTA CLARA : 2 Arrested in Effort to Steal Police Car

Two teen-agers were surprised to find that the vehicle they allegedly were trying to steal was an unmarked police car--and that the whole incident was captured by a security video camera, police said. “This is kind of the Keystone Kops of criminals,” said Santa Clara Police Sgt. James Buchanan. A dispatcher who was monitoring a video screen watched the theft at the parking lot of the city’s communication’s center and alerted officers, who sped to the scene, Buchanan said. Once there, police found two youths using a “slim jim” to open a car door, he said. Lester Chan, 18, and a 17-year-old accomplice, both of San Jose, were arrested, police said. One of the youths told police that he had wondered whether the word dispatcher , which marks the parking spot, meant anything, but his friend told him to forget it, Buchanan said.