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Sentencing rescheduled for knife-wielding man

A 61-year-old man who waved a knife outside San Diego police headquarters, prompting a two-hour standoff that ended when he was subdued by beanbag rounds and a large rubber bullet, was scheduled to

SAN DIEGO (CNS) - Sentencing was rescheduled Tuesday to May 3 for a man who waved a knife outside San Diego police headquarters, prompting a two-hour standoff that ended when he was subdued by beanbag rounds and a large rubber bullet.

Mark Steven Brown, 61, pleaded no contest to misdemeanor charges of resisting police and brandishing a deadly weapon in connection with the March 25 incident. He faces up to 18 months in jail.

Brown was pacing on a sidewalk in front of the downtown station in the 1400 block of Broadway, yelling at passersby, when he threatened a plainclothes officer with a folding knife about 10:45 a.m., said SDPD Assistant Chief Boyd Long.

The officer responded by pulling his service pistol and ordering Brown to disarm himself, Long said. When Brown refused, the officer retreated and called for backup.

Police closed the street in front of the headquarters complex while several dozen officers gathered in the street about 30 feet from Brown and ordered him to surrender.

Instead, he continued to rant and shouted derisively at the phalanx of officers, many of whom had their guns drawn. Crisis negotiators were then called in to try to reason with the seemingly enraged white-haired man, who was clad in baggy black pants and a puffy gray-green jacket and carrying a backpack.

The stalemate continued into the afternoon as Brown alternately walked back and forth on the roadside and sat on a short retaining wall next to a landscaped median, clutching the knife in his left hand and gesturing with the other while shouting insults about police, homosexuals and the news media.

Several times, Brown -- the subject of a prior court order to stay away from the police station due to a string of disturbances he'd caused there -- yelled that he did not want to go back to the county's psychiatric trauma hospital, and at one point said he'd been off his "meds" for "60 days now."

The stalemate continued until shortly after 1 p.m., when officers fired a single 40 mm rubber bullet and at least four beanbags from a shotgun at Brown, causing him to stagger and collapse.

Though incapacitated, Brown held on to the knife. After a moment, police sent in a service dog, which bit him on the arm, forcing him to drop the weapon.

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