Elmo busted
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Mr. Incredible and Elmo said they were taken into custody at gunpoint and driven in handcuffs by police car to the front of the Kodak Theatre. There they claim they were paraded on the Hollywood Walk of Fame before shocked tourists and other boulevard impersonators.
“We were leaving to get something to eat. We had our heads off and were walking about a block away to our car when they pulled up,” said Barry Stockton, 42, who was dressed as Mr. Incredible, wearing a red superhero costume topped with a huge, cartoonish head.
Donn Harper, 45, said he complied, tossing his bug-eyed, furry red Elmo costume head to the ground. “They jumped out of their car with guns drawn. With all of the crime in Los Angeles they pick on us?”
Stockton, of Ontario (San Bernardino County), and Harper, of Los Angeles, were charged with misdemeanor aggressive begging along with the “Scream” character, Bill Stevens, 54, of Hollywood. Police said the three were among those who had been warned that authorities were preparing to respond to growing complaints from boulevard visitors and merchants about the Tinseltown impersonators.
Some tourists have contended that they were harassed for failing to pay the costumed characters for posing for photos with them in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre and the nearby Kodak Theatre. Some merchants have grumbled that the impersonators were scaring customers with menacing costumes, fake weapons and props such as phony snakes.
Los Angeles Police Officer Michael Shea said the impersonators — who make their own costumes or buy what they say are licensed suits on eBay — were summoned to a meeting last month at the Hollywood and Highland shopping center and warned that enforcement of solicitation and harassment laws was coming. Sixty-eight of them, many in costume, showed up.
Shea said Mr. Incredible and Elmo were brought back to the boulevard so others could see they had been busted. “Make no mistake about it — I wanted the characters to know what we’re doing,”