It's all fun and games until the cops show up

I was driving to my softball game, half listening to the radio, when the traffic lady caught my attention. I call it the tivo effect. Because I've become accustomed to being able rewind tv and go back for things that seem interesting, I only pay partial attention. It's a nasty habit that has really screwed up my radio listening skills.
What I heard her say was, "blah blah blah... and we aren't sure if they are drug dealers or bank robbers, but they are throwing money out the car windows. Of course you're going to want to pull over if you're near this high speed chase." I wished I had actually listened to the beginning of the story to hear where to go to collect the free money, and thought it sounded pretty funny.
It got less funny about 10 minutes later when freeway traffic came to a halt and I saw a guy walking on the side of the road looking through the bushes for money. Then came two more people with cash in their hands, these two wearing black vests with POLICE on the back. In the course of about 20 minutes of crawling down the freeway at 2 mph, I nearly drove over a $20 bill and saw another fly by. Yes... it did cross my mind to pick it up, but only to help with the cleanup. But I'm such a wuss about getting in trouble with the law, that I just left it there for fear someone would jail me for tampering with evidence, or disrupting traffic, were I to open my car door and get out. So I hung out the window to take some pics, then went on my way after they finally opened the road ahead.
Another radio report came in describing how, at the time the money was flying about in clouds, people were stopping their cars on the freeway to run around and catch the money, even jumping over the center divide to get money on the other side. Yikes. I must have seen 15 police cars on my slow trip toward softball. It ended with the suspects caught further down the freeway, and me just barely arriving for my game on time.
For a more official report on the incident go HERE , to the local paper's website. At the time of posting, the cops had collected over $17,000 but there's no further info on what kind of bad guys had done this. They're guilty of littering, certainly, but I'm curious what else they were up to.
Video added - thanks to a reader who saw this on the BBC.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7955984.stm

Thank you ESPN!

We bought cheap tickets to watch Mexico vs. Cuba in the World Baseball Classic in San Diego on Monday night. Gosh it was fun, but it was so different from an MLB game I was confused a bit...
First of all there was the free entertainment. A gang of about 8 guys with percussion instruments were dancing around and drumming. First, my apologies for speaking music at a second grade level, but they were was banging on wood sticks and bowls, scraping on the cheese grater like thing, shaking the rain stick, tapping on a metal plate, and one guy was whistling with a little recorder. So fun to watch, but I first had trouble figuring out if they were routing for a certain team, or just enjoying themselves. The hat count: 4 Dominican Republic, 2 Puerto Rico, 1 Cuba and 1 Yankees. Eventually the Cuban flag came out when the camera guy came over. They were not being vocal or abrasive, but drumming and dancing. But a few Mexico fans got their flags out and started to yell and gesture - challenging them I guess - when team Mexico scored. (That was the worst part of the game - not speaking spanish and not knowing the jeers or jokes that had everyone else laughing.)
Then the whole front of our section got up, almost in unison, and started leaving their seats. I thought the Mexico fans were just going to move to the next section to distance themselves from the percussion troupe. (The stadium was nearly empty, so there was literally no one in the section next to ours.) But no, I was just confused, again. Because everyone, including the noisemakers, got up and left and the ushers were waving at us all to leave.
So here's where I get to thank ESPN... we all got to go down to the very expensive lower section! (so the tv audience wouldn't know how empty the stadium was) Now we could see the guys with the sombreros, feather headdresses, and Mexican wrestling masks personally taunting the percussion troupe, who was still nearby after we relocated below. It was so much fun! The crowd enthusiasm and volume. The flag waving. Just awesome.