On Friday, June 8, at 4:53 a.m. officers of the Santa Monica Police Department received a call informing them that a group of men, including a man wearing a red sweater*, were looking into parked cars using flashlights (this is considered suspicious behavior) in the area of Lincoln Blvd. and Washington Ave.
When the officers arrived, the officers checked the area and found a man wearing a black hooded sweatshirt gliding down the middle of the street on a skateboard.
The officers stopped him at the corner of Lincoln and Wilshire Boulevards so that the officers could try and determine whether he was one of the men looking into vehicles with flashlights.
As the officers were talking with this man a second man, wearing the red sweatshirt, appeared on the scene, and this man announced that he was in fact with the black sweatshirt wearing man.
The officers requested permission from these two men to search them both, and they agreed.
The officers conducted the search and found a flashlight and knife upon the person of one of these men, and in a backpack carried by the other man they discovered two portable GPS units, along with their chargers, a cell phone, and a number of other suspicious items.
The officers were able to confirm that these items were, in all reasonable probability, stolen and so these two men, one wearing black, the other red, were arrested.
Charges of receiving stolen property were leveled against an 18-year-old man from Compton (bail $1,000), and of curfew violation against a 16-year-old resident of Culver City.
*There is no intended implication that this story discriminates against people who wear red sweaters, or suggests that people who wear red sweaters are in any way criminally inclined.
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.
