Bail was set at $10,000 for a 58-year-old Santa Monica man on Tuesday, Aug. 26 after he was caught riding a bicycle while in possession of meth.
Officers of the Santa Monica Police Department who were on routine patrol noticed that a bicycle rider had violated a vehicle code in the 400 block of Arizona Avenue at 10:30 pm on this day, so they stopped the bicycle rider in order to discuss this violation with him.
The officers immediately recognized this bicycle rider from previous encounters that they had experienced with him, and so an air of reasonable suspicion was evidently present in the minds of the officers because they asked the bicycle rider if he would allow them to search inside his backpack.
The bicycle rider agreed.
The officers looked inside the backpack and discovered a substance that they believed resembled methamphetamine (methamphetamine is a neurotoxin and potent psychostimulant of the phenethylamine and amphetamine classes that is used as a recreational drug and, rarely, to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and obesity). They also found a glass smoking pipe of the kind that they recognized as one that that is routinely used to smoke the above-mentioned narcotic.
The officers, based upon the evidence, arrested this resident of Santa Monica and he was charged with possession of a controlled substance and possession of drug paraphernalia.
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.