Santa Monica police arrested a 44-year-old homeless man on Saturday, Nov. 15 who was caught in the act of stealing a package from an office building.
Officers of the Santa Monica Police Department who were on patrol responded at 10:10 am on this day to a report of a person suspected of stealing mail at 1424 Fourth Street.
The suspect had been reported as last being seen carrying a package away from the building and heading east on Santa Monica Boulevard.
The witness in this incident was a security guard at the office building.
The security guard had been alerted that the suspect had entered a sixth floor office suite and had been harassing the employees at the location.
As the security guard monitored the suspect on close-circuit surveillance cameras, the suspect had descended to the ground floor, walked through the open mailbox area, and had taken a box prior to exiting the building.
One of the police officers responding to this report spotted the suspect with the package on Santa Monica Boulevard and detained him.
The officer asked this man if the package belonged to him, to which he responded, “I took it off the top of the mailbox so I could use the name on the package to buy real estate and a vehicle.”
This man was thus arrested and taken to jail where he was later charged with receiving stolen property and identity theft. 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.
