When we first heard about the big burglar bust in the 5500 block of Harbord Drive on Friday, we called the Oakland Police Department to see what they could tell us. The cops said that neighbors and police had thwarted a break in at a marijuana grow house. That didn’t sound right to the neighbors, and so we held off writing anything until we could get the police report. It turns out that there was no marijuana growing in the house.

Here’s what went down according to the cops and eagle-eyed neighbors. At 2:47 pm, a neighbor called OPD to report a suspected burglary. Within minutes cops had arrived on the scene. One neighbor working in his home office looked out the window and saw three officers coming up his neighbor’s driveway with guns drawn. As he was hustling his wife and two girls upstairs, his daughter saw three people dash across the backyard deck. The man went back downstairs and saw three men crouched behind a bush across the street. He signaled their location to the police as the suspects dashed to the back of the house. Then he grabbed a baseball bat and went outside. He wasn’t the only one with that idea.

A number of residents were outside serving as extra eyes for the police. At least two men carried baseball bats. Neighbors report at least a dozen cop cars in the area. The police report doesn’t mention how many officers were there. Overkill or not, the sworn/civilian coordination worked. OPD arrested three suspects, a 15 year-old boy whose name can’t be released because he’s a minor, Matthew Buford, 19, and Michael Maes, 22. The trio drove to their would-be victim’s house in a stolen 2006 Pontiac Grand Am.

The man who saw the cops walking up his neighbor’s driveway retrieved a jar of money containing several hundred dollars in his backyard, which he was able to return to his neighbor. If the burglary had been successful, it would have been the 42nd burglary within the boundaries of 94611 in the past 60 days.