Caught in the crosshairs

Check out the cop to the left -- packing a big, silver piece.

So, I`m sitting in this little Internet cafe on a busy corner near mi casa, and all is quiet, but not for long.

Two city cops bust into the shop, very agitated, yelling and waving large pistolas.

It´s 2:15 p.m. on Wednesday afternoon, and it´s immediately apparent these cops are looking for someone considered armed and dangerous.

Very apparent when one cop faces me directly, assumes a firing position and points his gun directly at my face.

The distance from the barrel to my nose was about 5 feet.

After a wild little manhunt, the long arm of the law gets its man.

He held his position 3 to 4 seconds, and lowered the gun as his partner came back into the main room after peeking into the back room.

They speak rapidly and scram out of the shop. By the time the got outside, about five more cops had entered the area -- at least six cops have guns drawn, held up near the shoulder and pointing at the sky. One cop stops a motorcycle at the corner, pulls the kid off and takes off himself. Another stops a taxi and jumps into the back seat. A third commandeers a car, leaving a 40ish-year-old woman standing, shaken, in the street.

All three vehicles head south on Primavera. All three return within 3 minutes. The cop gives the bike back to the kid and walks off without a word. The kid pulls out his cell, makes a 10-second call and splits. No paperwork, no discussion, nothing. Never saw the taxi again, and the woman got her car back and was shooed out of the area.

The Spanish word for handcuffs is esposo, which is the same as the word for spouse, which I found amusing.

By this time, there were 20-25 cops milling about, about a third local, a third national and a third special forces, some kind of hybrid cross between cop and army soldier formed to deal with the Shining Path and other armed rebel types.

A crowd of at least 200 has spread around the T intersection.

Suddenly, five or six cops rush past the me and the others from the Internet cafe, now on the sidewalk, back into the cafe and grab a guy. They drag him outside, throw him in the gutter, kick him twice -- with the bottom of the boot, not the heel or toe, hit him with a baton once on the shoulder/neck area and cuff him.

A police SUV pulls up, the guy is thrown in the back and whisked away. No one in the crowd knows anything. Within five minutes, all the cops are gone from the area. Nothing in the papers Thursday or Friday.