An after dark bike ride for a 45-year-old homeless man on Aug. 22 ended in him being arrested after trying to fight police officers who asked to search him.
Santa Monica police officers were on patrol in the 1400 block of Colorado Avenue at 9:27 p.m. when they noticed a man riding his bicycle without a headlamp.
The officers drew closer and saw that this man was carrying several bicycle parts as well.
The officers stopped the man for the vehicle code violation and the man immediately became hostile with them, adopting an unpleasant attitude.
The officers asked the man for some identification and he told them that he did not have any. The officers probed some more, asking this man for his information and whether or not he was on probation.
The man informed the officers that he had several warrants for his arrest. The officers probed even deeper and confronted this man with a question about the likelihood that he was carrying anything illegal, to which he replied, “Go ahead and search me.”
The officers leapt at this opportunity, but the man seemed regretful at having invited the officers to examine his person and immediately swung around violently and began resisting.
One of the officers, in order to avoid a fight, used his police training and took the man down to the ground, whereupon the man resisted even more violently.
This 45-year-old homeless man was eventually handcuffed and arrested. He now faces charges of resisting a police officer and riding a bicycle without a headlamp. Bail was set at $12,945.
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.
