A shoeless 21-year-old Los Angeles resident was arrested and charged with code violation and resisting arrest after he was spotted by an officer taking trash out of a city-owned trash can and throwing it in the street in search of his shoes.
On Friday, April 3, at 9:45 am a motorcycle officer of the Santa Monica Police Department spotted a shoeless man who was standing over a city-owned trash can on Main Street and throwing items of trash from the city-owned trash can into the street.
The officer parked his motorcycle and approached the man requesting that the man cease his activities, pick up the discarded trash from the street, and return it to the aforementioned receptacle.
The man yelled at the officer that he was going to do no such thing and intended to continue to throw trash from the trashcan into the street until he discovered his shoes, that he believed were somewhere inside the trashcan.
The officer repeated his request and informed the shoeless man that in removing the items from the city-owned trashcan he was in violation of a Santa Monica Municipal Code.
The officer then asked this man for some identification to which the man responded by screaming obscenities at the officer.
The officers summoned assistance and a few moments later additional officers arrived at the location and they all attempted to detain the man.
The man refused to comply with the officers and swung his arm away from the grasp of an officer who had attempted to restrain him. There followed a brief standoff until the man calmed down a bit and the officers arrested him. 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.
