A Santa Monica man aged 27 was arrested on Wednesday, July 15, after snatching a phone from a man on the Santa Monica Pier.
Officers of the Santa Monica Police Department who were on a routine patrol in the downtown area of Santa Monica received a radio call at 10:11 am that informed them that a possible robbery had just occurred on the Pier.
The officers were told that the victim had reported that a black male, wearing a blue shirt had just snatched his cell phone, threatened him, and then thrown the cellphone into some bushes before leaving eastbound up the Pier ramp towards Ocean Avenue.
The officers rushed to the scene and spotted a man fitting the description.
The suspect was sitting on a bench in the 1500 block of Palisades Park.
The officers approached the suspect and detained him.
The officers then began to question the suspect but before the officers had finished asking the first question the suspect confessed to the officers that he did indeed take the cell phone from the victim.
The suspect attempted to justify his action, stating that he had become upset with the victim (even though he had never seen the victim before in his life) due to the fact that he had surmised that the victim had been using the cell phone to take pictures of girls, an act that the suspect found to be intolerable.
The officers met with the victim and the victim positively identified the suspect as the person who had taken the cell phone.
The officers retrieved the damaged cell phone and returned it to the victim. The officers then arrested the suspect and he was charged with robbery and vandalism. Bail was set at $50,000.
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.
