Santa Monica police arrested for a man caught masturbating at 7:09 a.m. on Friday, Oct. 26 in a doorway of a business in the 200 block of Arizona Avenue.
When officers of the Santa Monica Police Department went to the scene, they received news that the man who had been masturbating had left the doorway and was now in the 400 block of Arizona Avenue, so the officers went there instead.
The officers located and stopped the suspect and detained him while they investigated.
The officers spoke with the victim who said he had been walking along Arizona Avenue when he noticed that the suspect was sitting in the doorway with his pants around his thighs masturbating in plain sight. This act is against the law.
The victim added that he had asked the suspect to pull his pants up and the suspect had responded by cursing at him.
At that point the victim had called the police and a Downtown Service Officer who had monitored the radio call to officers and kept an eye on the suspect, eventually guiding the arriving officers to the location of the suspect.
After a brief struggle the officers overcame the suspect’s attempt to resist and this 46-year-old resident of Banning, California was charged with lewd acts and resisting officers. His bail 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.
