A man who was hiding inside a Santa Monica living room closet under clothes to avoid arrest was taken into custody Saturday, April 13.
At 9 pm officers of the Santa Monica Police Department who had been assigned to the department’s Crime Impact Team responded to a residential apartment complex located in the 2100 block of Delaware in order to serve a suspect with a no-bail warrant for his arrest, and to conduct a compliance check as he was on PRCS (Post Release Community Supervision) Probation.
The officers arrived and knocked on the front door of the residence several times, and although they could hear movement inside the apartment, nobody answered the door.
Eventually the door opened and a man who was known to the police (this usually means that he had a history of run-ins with the law) answered and told the officers the person who they were looking for was not in the building.
The officers entered anyway (they didn’t believe this man for some reason) and saw a woman who was sitting on the couch.
She also told the officers multiple times that the man they were seeking was not at home.
The officers took a look around the apartment and happened to notice that the living room closet door would not open.
The woman informed the officers that this door had been broken for many months and would not open (a typical situation for living room closet doors in many apartments?).
The officers pulled on the door several times and noticed that every time they did this the door would open slightly but then suddenly and forcefully shut itself each time, as if by magic!
The officers came to the conclusion that the person they were seeking was in fact inside the closet and that he was the one who kept closing the door.
They then opened it up all the way and found this man hiding under a pile of clothes.
The man refused to accept that he had been seen and remained still and silent even as the officers were ordering him to stand up.
Eventually the officers lifted him out of the closet and handcuffed him.
This man, aged 36 and homeless, was arrested and charged with resisting officers, and a probation violation.
Bail was not granted.
For her efforts in attempting to conceal the man in the closet, the woman on the sofa, aged 20 and also homeless, was charged with delaying officers.
Her 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.
