A local, unpermitted street performer was apprehended by police officers after stealing an electric guitar from a music store on Santa Monica Blvd.
The theft occurred at 10:05am last Friday morning at the Santa Monica Music Center, owned by Vice Mayor Lana Negrete. Surveillance video clearly showed the suspect walking into the store and nonchalantly walking out with a guitar while an employee was on the phone with a customer.
Only hours later, after Negrete had posted images from the in-store surveillance footage on social media, the suspect was apprehended by the Santa Monica Police Department (SMPD) a few blocks north, on Wilshire Blvd.
"A huge thank you to our amazing @santamonicapd the thief who stole our guitar was apprehended within hours of stealing it and it was returned to me this evening! Justice was served today! Im [sic] so grateful for the swift response and amazing work of our officers - specifically our downtown unit!" Negrete wrote on her Instagram account.
A little over a month ago, small business owners, community leaders and elected officials gathered in front of the Culver City Music Center Washington Blvd, to announce that over 900,000 signatures had been collected for the Homelessness, Drug Addiction and Theft Reduction Act (Initiative 23-0017A1) to qualify for the November General Election ballot.
Culver City Music Center was chosen as it’s the location of Negrete’s sister store to her Santa Monica Music Center and tragically, both have been victim to multiple break ins and organized burglaries over the course of the past few years.
The store has been in business for over 50 years and while many retail outlets deal with some petty crime, the Music Center on Santa Monica Blvd has been hit with repeated high value thefts in recent years. The current spate began in 2020 when the store was looted during the riots that spread from Downtown. They were then burgled in 2021 when thieves smashed a window and stole several guitars used to support the nonprofit music charity Negrete runs out of the same location. Guitar Center replaced those instruments only for the replacements to be stolen just a few months later.
Despite all of this and having to deal with her father’s recent passing, plus a cancer diagnosis, Negrete remains upbeat. "He put stickers on it and had a case he stole from us previously that’s wrecked now but we got it back and let him know that we will catch you if you steal in Santa Monica!" she wrote on Instagram.
According to Negrete, the suspect frequents many stores in Santa Monica. "I drove around for an hour. I drove to the pawn shop, spoke to the security guards in front of different stores and downtown. Plus the staff at the Pier and they said that they recognized him from being an unpermitted musician who would play there," she told the Daily Press.
"But when they [SMPD] got him, they think he was high on fentanyl. I can’t confirm that, but he was pretty out of it. He had a case that he’d stolen from us a month or so ago," Negrete said.
"Unfortunately because of our current laws and bail schedule in California (not set by us local elected officials or by our police) he will be released with a ticket to hopefully show up in court. Catch, book and release," she wrote on Instagram.
"By him being let out, he’s not being served and nor is the community, because he’s most likely not going to make it to his court appointment … so he won’t be offered a diversion program. Most likely had he been held, he would have been guaranteed that," said Negrete.
She said that Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón had reached out to her about this issue after she tagged his office in a recent post following the theft.
"How this is a system our current DA thinks works boggles me! Small businesses are impacted ! I can’t sell this item as new it may be damaged and the case is definitely not sellable. My insurance deductible is so high it doesn’t make sense to claim it just to have premiums increased again - so who loses? We do- the small family businesses. And our officers go out put themselves in harms way and do their job over and over only to have to release criminals back into the streets ; I can’t imagine how that feels for them," she wrote on Instagram.
