COMMENTS & CURIOSITIES:Robbery, rollover, railing: B-plus

Not a great run, but a good one. I’m always paging through the police blotter, as you know, and the last few weeks have had some better-than-average entries.

On Sept. 1, there was yet another bank robbery, this time at the Citibank on East 17th Street in Costa Mesa. I don’t know if NewportMesa land is the capital of bank robberies, but we must be in the running.

I’m waiting to read about a bank robbery that happens during a bank robbery. Has to happen sooner or later. “Yes I can read, sir, but I’m already being robbed. Could you go to the next window? Thanks.”

This one was pretty standard — man hands teller note, teller hands man money, man leaves. It happened in broad daylight, mid-morning, 10:45 a.m., which is also standard. Most robberies go down mid-morning or afternoon. Bank robbers don’t like long lines any more than we do.

In the coulda-beenspectacular-sure-glad-it-wasn’t folder, there was the accident last Thursday afternoon on Newport Coast Drive.

Ever been on Newport Coast Drive? I have. Big hill, nice and wide, really steep. Just after 4 p.m. Thursday, a fully loaded cement truck was making its way down the hill on Newport Coast Drive toward Pacific Coast Highway.

Bet you already know what happens next. We’ve all been there, coasting down a long steep hill, tapping the brake pedal, wondering, “What if the brakes gave out? What would I do?”

Very few of us have had to find out, even fewer in a fully loaded cement truck. The cement truck in question, which was barreling toward Pacific Coast Highway with no brakes and with Newport Coast Drive rapidly drawing to a close, raises an interesting question: What is the difference between cement and concrete? Do you know?

This is interesting, assuming there’s not a lot going on in your life. Cement is an ingredient in concrete, which is a mixture of water, sand and rock. It’s the fine powder that forms a paste when you add water and holds the other stuff together when it dries. Isn’t that ironic?

It wasn’t a cement truck at all that was about to roar through the intersection of Newport Coast Drive and PCH — it was a concrete truck. But everyone says cement truck, so why fight it. Actually, if you really want to get technical, it’s called a “truck-mounted revolving drum mixer.”

Do you know who invented it? An Armenian immigrant named Stephen Stepanian, in 1916. You don’t need to write that down. It probably won’t come up again.

Anyway, when Thursday’s cement truck turned rocket sled reached PCH, the driver was able to muscle it into a right turn, but the combination of too fast and too heavy tipped the steel mammoth over and sent it skidding across three lanes of PCH. Incredibly — no, miraculously — not only was no one seriously hurt, but no other cars were hit, although I’m guessing it really focused the senses of the drivers coming in both directions.

The truck driver was cited for driving at an unsafe speed, although his passenger, the only person injured, should have been cited for RMVD — riding in a motor vehicle while dumb.

He wasn’t wearing a seat belt, which is understandable because there was no passenger seat. He was sitting on a milk crate.

I also have a hunch the city of Newport Beach and Caltrans might be looking into who can use Newport Coast Drive and who cannot, given that Thursday’s near miss was the fourth cement truck accident on Newport Coast Drive since July 2004.

With a fully loaded cement truck weighing in at about 66,000 pounds — 40,000 pounds of concrete and 26,000 pounds of truck — it’s easy to see why hills, brakes and cement trucks do not care for each other.

Newport Beach Police Officer David Darling explained the problem of trying to hold onto 33 tons of steel and concrete with the degree of understatement that only police officers can master. “Any vehicle that carries some significant weight is going to experience some brake problems at the bottom” of the hill, Darling said.

Yeah, I guess that’s true.

Last but not least, although definitely the most loopy, was the call to Costa Mesa police at 6 p.m. on August 31 about a man who was on the Bear Street and I-405 overpass prying off pieces of guardrail.

When the police arrived to inquire further into exactly what the man had in mind, they found Gary Lauterbach, 50, calmly dragging chunks of guardrail down the embankment below the overpass and wrestling them into his truck, which was parked behind Best Buy in the Metro Pointe shopping center.

Lauterbach was taken in on suspicion of grand theft and felony vandalism, which will cost about three grand to repair, according to Caltrans.

Do you get it? I don’t get it. Let’s review. You park your car behind Best Buy at Metro Pointe. You climb up an embankment to the Bear Street overpass, which means you’re already attracting attention. Then, in broad daylight with cars zooming by you, you start tearing up guardrail.

First of all, how do you do that? Guardrail, whenever I’ve tried to pry it off, is bolted on really tight with really big hardware. Anyway, once you have enough guardrail, and I’m not sure how much that is, you clamber back down the embankment, then clank your way through the Metro Pointe parking lot to your truck, as if nobody has noticed any of this.

I have read a lot of crime stories in my day, but when Lauterbach gets out, I hope someone writes the saga of Gary and the guardrail. I would love to know what the plan was, assuming there was one, which I doubt.

Just because crime doesn’t pay doesn’t mean it can’t entertain.

I gotta go.