A 47-year-old Santa Monica man was arrested on Thursday, Nov. 19 after slapping a bank employee in the face after becoming upset about fee and bank charges.
At 11:40 am officers of the Santa Monica Police Department responded to a report of battery that had just occurred inside a bank located in the 400 block of Wilshire Boulevard.
When the officers arrived at the bank they spoke with the victim who was the assistant manager at the bank.
The victim told the officers that the suspect was a customer of the bank and had entered the bank earlier in order to question some fees and bank charges that had been applied to his account.
Apparently the suspect was upset because these charges had caused his account to be overdrawn which had resulted in even more charges being applied to his account.
The assistant manager said that during the discussion the suspect had suddenly slapped her in the face, adding that the slap had caused her glasses to fall off and that this had resulted in a cut to her nose.
The officers then spoke with the suspect who admitted to the officers that he had indeed slapped the assistant manager but in mitigation he said that he suffered from some mental health issues and that is the reason that he had slapped the assistant manager.
He then claimed that he knew that it was wrong to slap assistant managers of banks across their faces as a way of attempting to get bank charges removed, but at the same time considered it to be a justified response under the circumstances.
The officers accepted the victim’s request for a private person’s arrest and this Santa Monica man was arrested and later charged with assault. 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.
