Santa Monica police arrested a 48-year-old Los Angeles woman on Wednesday, Dec. 4 after finding a “crack pipe” on her person that contained methamphetamine residue.
Officers of the Santa Monica Police Department were on patrol in the area of 12th Street and Olympic Boulevard at 12:04 am on this day as a result of recent reports of narcotics activity in that part of town when they chanced upon a person who was standing on the west sidewalk of the 1700 block of 12th Street.
The officers observed this person walk westbound into a parking lot, so they followed to see what was going on.
The officers then saw two people standing in this parking lot located directly behind a commercial building.
The officers spoke with these individuals and during the verbal exchange, one of the subjects announced that they (the suspects, not the officers) were high because they had just smoked some methamphetamine.
The officers then asked this pair if they were in possession of anything illegal, but they said that they were not.
The officers then asked them if they would mind being searched, and the subjects told the officers that they didn’t mind at all.
The officers then searched the pair and discovered upon one of them had a “crack pipe” (a hollow glass bulb, with an extruding shaft, used for vaporizing methamphetamine or crystal meth, in order to inhale the vapor for its stimulating properties).
The pipe contained a white residue. The officers searched further, and in the purse of the woman upon whom they had discovered the pipe, found two small clear plastic polyurethane bags that appeared to contain a crystalline powder residue.
The officers recalled their training and deduced that this substance could well be methamphetamine.
The officers arrested the owner of the purse. This woman was charged with possession of drug paraphernalia and bail was set at $250.
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.
