A 51-year-old man was arrested in Venice on Saturday, Aug. 16 after being caught stealing a “bait bicycle” under the surveillance of the Santa Monica Police Department.
Officers of the Santa Monica Police Department who were assigned to the downtown area of Santa Monica were monitoring the movements of a “bait bicycle” at 3 pm on this day.
The bicycle been electronically tagged in a fashion that allowed the officers to receive pings from its transponder that pinpointed its position every 10 seconds.
The “bait bicycle” had originally been placed in the 1500 block of Alley Number One when it was been taken.
The officers noticed that it was, at the above time, traveling southbound in the 1700 block of Ocean Front Walk – this information was relayed to other officers who were on beach patrol at that time.
These beach patrol officers were then able to locate the bicycle that was at that time being ridden by the described suspect through the Venice Skate Park.
The officers detained the suspect and then arrested this 51-year-old man (whose place of residence was not know to us at the time this report was compiled) and he was charged with possession of stolen property.
Bail was set at $20,000.
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.
