An 18-year-old transient was arrested and charged with altering an imitation firearm in order to make it appear real on Friday, Dec. 28.
At 5:30 p.m., a concerned citizen flagged officers of the Santa Monica Police Department down while they were on patrol in the 1300 block of Third Street Promenade.
This citizen was concerned because she had seen a man with what appeared to be a gun. She told the officers she had witnessed the man holding a gun in his right hand before putting down into the waistband of his trousers.
The officers went in search of this man and spotted him lurking at the corner of Fourth Street and Santa Monica Boulevard. The officers carefully approached this man and immediately detained him.
They followed this up with a trouser search and found the “weapon” concealed in the man’s trousers.
The officers examined the article they had retrieved from the man’s trousers and discovered that it was in fact a toy replica weapon, although smaller than a real one, this man had wrapped black tape around the barrel, trigger, and hammer in order to make it appear bigger and more like a real one.
After he was arrested his bail was set at $500.
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.
