P.C. 470 on the Pier
Tuesday, August 28 at 6:00 p.m. – The Pier – A man came up to the counter at the Pizza Hut at Pacific Park, ordered food and presented a $100 bill in payment. Employees recognized the bill as counterfeit and called the police. The man admitted to employees and SMPD officers that he knew the bill was a fake when he presented it as payment for the food. He was arrested for violation of Penal Code section 470 covering counterfeiting, forgery and related offenses.
P.C. 470 at the Bank
Wednesday, August 29 at 3:15 p.m. – 100 block of Wilshire Boulevard – A teller at Pacific Western Bank got two or three strange-sounding telephone calls from a man asking for the bank’s location, whether it was equipped to cash a check and whatnot. When a man came in shortly thereafter and tried to cash a $6,500 check, the teller recognized his voice. The check was made out to a fictitious name, and the man had identification in the same fictitious name. Only problem was, the teller recognized the name as being – coincidentally, it turns out – the name of a real bank customer who didn’t look a thing like the fellow standing in front of her, inasmuch as the real customer was white and this fellow was black. She called the police. The fellow, who the police describe as a transient from Santa Monica, admitted that he purchased both the check and the I.D. from a friend in Los Angeles. He was arrested for violation of Penal Code section 470 covering counterfeiting, forgery – but you know that.
Get a Story!
Tuesday, August 28 at 7:45 a.m. – Parking Structure No. 2 at 1235 2nd Street – Officers on routine patrol saw a man standing at an open car door rifling through papers in the car and glancing around furtively from time to time. The officers approached and the fellow offered conflicting accounts of his conduct: it was his girlfriend’s car, but he didn’t know her phone number; he was looking for his cell phone, but it was on his waist; etc. From the papers the man had been rifling, the police identified the owner of the Acura Integra who worked at a store on the Promenade, and in a field show-up the owner didn’t know the fellow from Adam. The man, a Santa Monica resident, was arrested for auto burglary.
Hit and Run and Call
Tuesday, August 28 at 8:20 p.m. – 29th Street between Pico Boulevard and Pearl Street – A man was standing in the street talking to his wife who was sitting in the driver’s seat of her car. A white van coming southbound on 29th from Pico veered to the right (the driver later said that he was reaching for his dropped cell phone) and hit the man. The van kept on going. When the van driver got home (he lived just down the block) he called the police, who responded and arrested him for felony hit and run. [Leaving the scene=Hit and run. Person injured = Felony.]
