On Friday, June 22, at 10:26 a.m. officers of the Santa Monica Police Department went to the beach restrooms located in the 2800 block of Ocean Front Walk after they had received a report of a man who was using a squirt gun to spray water onto passing citizens.
This man, it was also reported, was in possession of a medium sized dog that was acting in a vicious and threatening manner.
When the officers arrived, they tried to talk with this man, who by then had locked himself inside the restroom with his dog.
The officers asked the man to come outside and he responded by squirting them with the squirt gun.
The officers used a passkey to enter the restroom and a scuffle ensued between the officers and the man. At one point the man slammed the restroom door onto the arm of an officer. The man was also using his dog as a weapon, encouraging it to bite the officers.
The officers managed to extricate this man from the restroom and take him down to the ground.
This man would not, however, release the dog, which was tied to his arm by a rope, and the dog was continuing to attempt to bite the officers, but the officers kept the dog at bay by keeping the suspect between themselves and the dog.
The man’s dog then apparently became confused and began to bite his owner several times. The officers tried to use their tazer to subdue the dog, but this was not successful, and in the confusion the man was also affected by the tazer. The officers were then attempting to gain control of the suspect and as they were doing so the suspect leaned over to his dog and bit the dog on the leg, causing the dog to cry out (yelp).
At that point a K-9 officer, assisted by an Animal Control officer, managed to restrain the dog. The suspect was then taken into custody.
This man was taken to a local hospital in order to be treated for exposure to pepper spray, being tazed, and the bites from his own dog.
After the visit to the hospital this 20-year-old homeless man was taken to jail where he was charged with cruelty to animals, resisting officers, battery upon a police officer and a fugitive warrant out of Pima County, Arizona.
Bail was not granted.
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.
