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Police Benefit Uses a Soft Cell Approach

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It may not be considered hard labor, but for the dozen or so local business people taken into custody Tuesday, working the phones for donations was their ticket to freedom.

Arrested on a variety of made-up charges ranging from tardiness to withholding hugs, the individuals were detained in a makeshift jail in front of JC Penney on the San Fernando Mall until they raised enough cash to satisfy their jailers.

Their jailers, as it happened, were local Kiwanis Club members, who on Tuesday were staging their annual “Jail and Bail” benefit for the San Fernando Police Department’s DARE program.

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“This is the seventh time I’ve been arrested and I still haven’t learned my lesson,” said real estate broker Ana Maria Colon.

The detainees included former City Councilman Ray Ojeda and First American Bank executive Ed Roybal, among others.

Vincent Maffei, president of the San Fernando Kiwanis Club, said the day’s event would raise between $5,000 and $8,000 for DARE, the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program.

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