Three Glendale residents were arrested at Santa Monica Place on Wednesday, Feb. 25, after being caught using a stolen credit card to go on an expensive shopping spree.
Officers of the Santa Monica Police Department were called out to the Louis Vuitton store at Santa Monica Place at 7:30 pm in order to investigate a report of a suspicious person.
The reporting party, an employee at Ben Bridge, had stated that a suspect had just purchased a $4,000 watch with a credit card.
Shortly after the purchase, the store had received a call from the legitimate owner of the credit card informing them that she had discovered that a large charge had just taken place at the store and that the charge had not been personally authorized be her.
The reporting party also told the dispatch operator that the suspect was now on his way to Louis Vuitton. While at Louis Vuitton the suspect was joined by a second person (of an unreported gender) and this person selected a purse for purchase.
As the two suspects were waiting to pay for the purse the reporting party informed a Louis Vuitton staff member that the suspect had just used fraudulent information to make a purchase at Ben Bridge.
When the officers arrived they waited outside of Louis Vuitton for the suspects to exit before they apprehended the pair.
The suspects, noting the presence of police officers outside the store, became suspicious and attempted to leave in a different direction, but were unsuccessful.
The officers asked the two suspects to leave the store, but one of them ran at an officer and threw the Louis Vuitton bag at the officer before running away.
A foot pursuit ensued and the officer caught the suspect at which point the suspect began to struggle and display assaultive behavior towards the officer.
Eventually, after grappling in the street with the suspect, the officer prevailed with the assistance of other officers and the suspect was arrested.
The officers then spoke with Santa Monica Place Security Personnel and discovered that a third suspect had been involved. The officers located and arrested the third suspect a short time later and found to be in possession of several fraudulent credit cards and a purse that had been purchased with a fraudulent credit card.
All three suspects were charged with a variety of offenses that included battery on a police officer, identity theft, conspiracy, resisting arrest and identity theft. Bail was not granted to any member of this trio and the ages of the suspects were not available at the time of going to press.
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.
