On Saturday, March 31, at 5:10 p.m. officers of the Santa Monica Police Department were on patrol in the area of Third Street and Arizona Avenue when they saw a man dropping some litter in the street.
The officers swung into action and stopped this litterbug in order to investigate. The officers asked the man his name and then requested some proof of identification (driving license, ID card, or papers). This man did not have any proof of identification so the officers decided to arrest him for the offense of littering and to discover his real identity.
The man was taken down to police headquarters where they discovered that he was actually the person who fitted the name that he had given (presumably by using modern technology).
The officers, satisfied that this 21-year-old homeless man was not someone else gave him his citation and he was set free.
Editor’s Note: These reports are part of a regular police coverage series entitled “Alert Police Blotter” (APB), which injects some minor editorial into certain police activities in Santa Monica. Not all of the Mirror’s coverage of incidents involving police are portrayed in this manner. More serious crimes and police-related activities are regularly reported without editorial in the pages of the Santa Monica Mirror and its website, smmirror.com.
