A North Hills man who fell asleep in his silver Chevrolet Silverado in Santa Monica on Aug. 26 was arrested by SMPD officers after they found a bunch of burglary tools in his truck.
At 7:21 p.m. officers went to the area of 15th Street and Colorado Avenue after receiving a report of a possible drunk driver in a silver truck.
When they arrived the officers noticed a silver Chevrolet Silverado truck to be in the left turn pocket at Colorado and 20th Street, so the officers stopped behind it.
The officers approached and noticed there was a man who appeared to be asleep in the truck, and that the engine was running.
The officers reached into the truck and turned off the engine prior to waking the man up.
The officers then tested the man in order to evaluate his degree of sobriety and deemed him not to be under the influence. The man said that he was exhausted and had fallen asleep.
The officers asked the man if they could take a look inside his truck and he said that they could, so they did.
The officers found, amongst other things, a lock pick set, pry bars, bolt cutters, and other miscellaneous tools commonly used to commit thefts.
The man tried to explain to the officers that he was a plumber and so needed these things for his job, but the officers were having none of it, and reminded the man that these tools are not typically utensils that would be of any practical use to a plumber, but could be used by a burglar.
The man was thus arrested for possession of burglary tools and taken to jail where he had a probation violation added to the charges. The bail for this 31-year-old man was set at $10,000.
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.
