By Kevin Duguid
IT COULD have been a scene from a gangster film set in south central LA.
Cops armed to the teeth with machine guns and wearing protective jackets paraded in front of a tower block ready to swoop.
And police sniffer dogs could be heard barking as young families looked on during the armed operation.
But this was not a scene from a gangland drugs bust.
This was a stand-off at a shiny new building in a quiet suburb of Edinburgh between officers and man wielding a knife.
A 38-year-old has now been detained after police teams swooped on the block of flats at Tinto Place, in the Bonnington area of the city.
Two armed response units were scrambled to the flats at around 11.20am after residents told them a man with a kitchen knife was shouting out threats.
Handlers with police dogs were among the first officers to enter the property.
Moments later four cops wearing protective gear armed themselves with machine guns, guns, batons and tasers.
They then stood and waited outside the block of flats while negotiations were made with the man.
Neighbours, some with children, were turned away from the building while officers carried out the operation.
One young boy, who lived in the block next door, was so intrigued that he fetched a camera to get a shot of the action.
But the armed cops were later stood down and the man was taken away quietly by uniformed officers.
One resident said: “There was a big guy with a blade. For some reason he was hanging about for an hour and a half in one of the flats.”
The police took away a kitchen knife in a container that looked about 12 inches long.
The man was then bundled into a police car and taken away just before 12pm.
A spokeswoman for Lothian and Borders Police said a man had been held in connection with the incident. “A 38-year-old man has been detained,” she said.
