What is a 459?

[Torsten]

So what is a "459"? I figure it must be some kind of criminal act? I came across it in the movie "Murder by numbers". There is this sentence "Maybe she caught somebody in a 459, and he panicked."

Thanks a lot,
Torsten
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[Jamie (K)]

I don't think these violation codes are standard from city to city or state to state, but it sounded like a burglary to me. I looked it up on this website:

http://www.stocktongov.com/SMC/Chapter02/Ch02_PartVI.cfm

Sure enough, it's a burglary. The number 459 is evidently the number of the section in the California state penal code that involves burglary.

Since penal codes vary from place to place, you may find a different number used in books, movies or TV shows about New York or some other place. Normally, when Americans hear them, we just guess at them or ignore them if they're not important. The hardest thing is interpreting the police slang in the more realistic TV shows about police in New York. Some of it has to be more than 100 years old. A "shy" is a loan shark, short for the name of Shakespeare's character Shylock. "Skell" means a homeless street person.

Today I was watching a police show in which the NYC police were investigating a murder on a subway. A man from the New York transit authority kept complaining to one of the detectives that they were taking too long and holding up the trains. The detective called the man "Benito". Do you know why?