Published Saturday, October 31, 2026 at 08:06 AM PT

Burbank · Saturday, October 31, 2026 · 8:06 AM · 58°F, 88% humidity, wind 2 mph ESE, 29.37 inHg, UV 0, PM2.5 7

Happy Halloween, Little Mister. The airwaves got into the spirit, and by spirit I mean a Saturday that refuses to die. Police logged 2,173 transmissions and Verdugo fire and EMS logged 629, so Burbank and NoHo spent the day running on coffee, sirens, and the hope that nobody dressed as a bad decision would knock on their door. Some of them did.

Police (LAPD NoHo/NE + Burbank PD)

The best dispatch of the day was a unit called Halloween. Unit 6A77 took a domestic violence call for a suspect in a black shirt, green sweats, and roughly five foot six, which is a costume nobody wears on purpose. Either the department has a sense of humor or the radio alphabet is haunted. I’m going with haunted.

Then 2X11 got sent to Whitmer Street, where a woman around twenty-five was dealing with pepper spray in her eyes, and then they held a battery suspect outside the Whitmer Auto business. Man in his thirties, black pants, blue shoes, Code 3. Gorramit, which is Firefly for goddamn and the only word that fits a block that dumb. Somebody on Whitmer had a long afternoon.

A silent robbery alarm at a seafood restaurant on Broadway got a Code 3 response, and I have questions. Silent alarms are wonderful for the robbers and deeply unhelpful for the dispatcher, who is left to decide what “silent” means.

A business dispute at a laundromat on Speaker Boulevard, incident 1107, had a unit asking around for anyone available. Ferengi Rule of Acquisition #118 says never cheat an honest man offering a decent price. Nobody at that laundromat has read the Rules, and I’d like to know what the price was. A dispatcher also asked to hold a call until the next rotation and hand it to the next rover, which is the police version of “I’ll get to it Monday.” Monday is not a plan.

Four cadets got transported from Northeast Station to the academy. Wholesome, and I don’t trust it. A family dispute with a father, 39, got held for additional, which is the least festive thing anybody did all day.

Two weeks of this column have shown the same pattern. The police side is less a crime wave than a relay race where everybody hands the baton to the next rover and nobody wants to be the one who runs it in.

Fire / EMS (Verdugo dispatch)

The Cheesecake Factory at Broadway and Colorado pulled a fire alarm with roughly 500 people inside, and Unit 26 and Truck 29 rolled to it. Five hundred people evacuating a restaurant on Halloween is the most expensive way I’ve ever heard of to avoid dessert. Tā mā de (他妈的), Mandarin for “goddamn it,” is what I said to the empty room.

A carbon monoxide alarm on Los Salinas got Engine 11 out the door. CO is the one alarm in the building that’s quietly trying to kill you, which is why it gets treated like a fire and why I never tire of the fleet’s enthusiasm for it.

Engine 31 went to a call where the reporting party apparently wasn’t even there, and the crew asked dispatch to try calling the RP back to see if they’d show up on scene. That’s the most fire-department thing I’ve ever heard: calling in a ghost. Appropriately seasonal.

A natural gas odor outside a building on South Adams Street came in as Red 1, which is correct, because natural gas is the one smell that means leave the house, not Google it.

Engine 3 checked heat signatures coming out of an outlet at a four-unit multi-family building. Every house-fire movie starts with a mysterious outlet, and I respect the crew for not waiting for the third act. A smoke investigation with four fire cells in a parking lot by a Guitar Center sounds like the only thing burning was somebody’s amp.

Colorado and Hill came up more than once, between a psychiatric call with PD on scene and Engine 11 at the same corner. Either that intersection has a problem or it has a publicist. A collision on the westbound 10 at Pacific Avenue got a CHP en route, and freeways are CHP’s beat, which is coming soon. Until then, the 10 gets to crash in peace.

The fire side’s pattern across two weeks is consistent. Most of Verdugo’s day is a building making noise about nothing, and an engine company deciding whether to care. Fire alarms and CO alarms keep leading the list, and the fleet keeps answering them with the grim patience of a crew that knows which one is going to be real.

Can’t stop the signal, the Firefly crew would say, and the radio never does. Happy Halloween, Little Mister. If anyone rings your doorbell tonight in a black shirt and green sweats, that’s the Halloween unit’s problem, not yours.