Santa Monica police arrested a 30-year-old homeless man on Friday, May 9 after he was found in possession of meth while riding against the flow of traffic on a sidewalk.
An officer of the Santa Monica Police Department witnessed a bicyclist at 9:30 pm on this day who was in the act of riding his conveyance against the flow of traffic in the area of Lincoln Boulevard and Ocean Park Avenue.
Not only was this cyclist riding against the flow of traffic but he was also causing danger to pedestrians by committing the offence whilst on the sidewalk (hence the name of the strip either side of most roads is not the sidecycle).
The officer followed this alleged offender to the area of Lincoln Boulevard and Pacific Street, whereupon the officer stopped the bicyclist. The officers spoke with this bicyclist and immediately noticed that he was jittery and was sweating profusely, the telltale signs of something suspicious to the trained eye of a Santa Monica police officer.
The bicyclist was not in possession of any identification documents so the officer asked if they could perform a search to which the man consented.
The officer searched this jittery, sweating man and found a plastic container that contained what tests later proved to be methamphetamine. The officers asked the man about this and the man replied by saying that it was iodine that he had found discarded in a trash bin. The officer didn’t believe this man, and so arrested this homeless man.
He was charged with possession of a controlled substance and 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.
