Downtown standoff ends without casualties

BY COLBY FRAZIER
DAILY SOUND STAFF WRITER

A tense standoff between Santa Barbara Police and a man waving a pistol outside the Ralphs grocery store at the corner of Carrillo and Chapala streets ended without casualties yesterday, when police shot the man with two bean bags and sent in a police K-9.
The standoff lasted about an hour and 20-minutes before police diffused the situation with a high-powered bean bag gun, which dropped the man to the ground. When the man, who police identified as 58-year-old Ralph Kenneth Provident, did not immediately drop the gun, the K-9 was sent in.


“We take these things very very seriously,” said Santa Barbara Police Chief Cam Sanchez. “The sun was going down, we needed to do something and we did.”
Sanchez said the weapon the man was wielding ended up being an air gun.
The bustling Ralphs was quickly evacuated, with customers exiting from a back door while Provident stood in one spot along an easement leading into the Ralphs, waiving the air gun above his head with his right hand.
Police quickly formed a perimeter around the scene, shutting down the block of Chapala between Figueroa and Carrillo.
Sanchez said negotiators conversed with Provident for some time, but couldn’t convince him to drop his weapon.
“It was a great conversation back and forth, Sanchez said. “He just wouldn’t release the weapon and that was our concern.”
When the initial 911 call came in, Sanchez said he and pretty much everyone else listening to the radio feared Provident was inside the store with the gun.
Police officials said Provident was treated at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital for minor abrasions to his abdomen and upper torso.
Police said Provident was booked into county jail for brandishing a replica handgun and resisting arrest.
Sanchez said the heavy police presence in the area was partly due to the fact that several officers were getting off of work when the call came in, and instead of going home headed to the scene.
“We had as many people here as possible,” Sanchez said. “Our folks did a great job.”