Two East Los Angeles men on probation were arrested Friday, Aug. 3 for possessing meth, narcotics, weed, and fraudulent documents after Santa Monica police pulled them over and searched their car after the officers noticed the 2010 Honda Civic they were driving was missing license plates.
Officers were on patrol at 7:24 p.m. when they noticed the car traveling southbound on Neilson Way at Barnard Way.
When officers saw the vehicle did not display any license plates, they stopped it given that not displaying such plates is a violation of 5200 and 5201 of the California Vehicle Code.
The vehicle was stopped on Rose Avenue in Venice and the officers spoke with the driver and the three passengers in the vehicle, and discovered that the driver and front seat passenger was on probation.
The officers obtained consent to search the vehicle and so they did.
The first thing they found was hidden under the door molding, namely several documents that indicated fraudulent activity.
The second was methamphetamine and two bottles of prescription narcotics that were hidden under the front passenger seat.
Finally, the officers discovered some marijuana inside the trunk.
The officers arrested the driver and front seat passenger, impounded the car, and released the two other passengers at the scene.
The driver, a 30-year-old resident of Alhambra, was charged with possession of false checks, possession of marijuana for sale, making a fictitious check, transportation of a controlled substance for sale, possession of a controlled narcotic, unauthorized use of a person’s information, receiving stolen property, possession of a controlled substance without a prescription and violation of probation.
The passenger, a 21-year-old San Gabriel resident, was charged with transportation of a controlled substance, possession of burglary tools and violation of probation.
Neither of these individuals was awarded bail.
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.