Santa Monica police arrested a 48-year-old homeless man on Sunday, June 8 after becoming physical toward officers who had ordered him to stop removing trash from dumpsters.
An officer of the Santa Monica Police Department was working his routine patrol when flagged down by a citizen at 10:15 pm on this day.
The officer was informed that a man was in an alley in the area of Ocean Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard and that this man was removing trash from dumpsters and throwing said trash into the middle of the alley.
The officer went to the scene and ordered the suspect to stop this unwelcome activity forthwith.
The officer then asked the suspect what his [the suspect’s] name was and the suspect responded by mumbling in sounds that did not constitute any kind of recognizable language with which the officer was familiar.
The suspect then began to walk closer to the officer and raised his fists in the fashion of a prizefighter from the 1950’s.
The suspect then grabbed the officer’s shoulder but the officer used his training to block the suspect’s hand.
The suspect then temporarily outwitted the officer by slyly kicking the officer in the leg.
The officer responded by punching the suspect and used some more specialist police unarmed combat training to grab the suspect’s left arm and swiftly take the suspect down to the ground.
The officer then arrested this homeless man and he was later charged with battery on a police officer, resisting arrest, and curiously, riding a bicycle on the sidewalk (which he must have done at some time during the proceedings, according to the charge sheet, but the details of this were not available at the time of going to press).
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.
