Gender-Bender Offender Cuffed in Buena Park

BUENA PARK — Rookie Officer Daniel Binyon was on a routine shoplifting call at the Lucky supermarket Saturday night when the shouts started: A BB-gun-toting man claiming to be a woman was outside ramming a shopping cart into his police cruiser.

Binyon, just three months on the job, sprinted outside to find someone slamming a cart into his car and yelling that he/she “didn’t like Democrats or Republicans,” according to Buena Park Lt. Michael Schwartz. While a small crowd looked on, Binyon grabbed the culprit, yanking a gun from his/her waistband in the parking lot of the supermarket at 6931 La Palma Ave., he said.

“I guess he had to wrestle her to the ground to get the cuffs on her,” said Schwartz, deciding to refer to the person as a woman.

“She’s kinda hefty. She looks like that character on ‘Saturday Night Live.’ You know, she looks like Pat,” he said, referring to the mannish, but gender-ambiguous character on the TV show.

Binyon sheepishly hustled the person, whose driver’s license identifies her as a him, to the Buena Park Police Station in his scratched-up cruiser. But at the station, a new dilemma arose.

“She says she’s a she,” Schwartz said. “The big conflict we have now is: ‘Should I put her with the men or the women?’ Right now we’ve got her off by herself.”

The individual’s name was not available late Saturday.