An unidentified man attempted to grab and flee with the purse of a woman enjoying dinner outside with her friend at the Blue Plate Taco on Ocean Ave on Tuesday evening. The ordeal was captured on the popular restaurant's surveillance cameras.
According to Jenny Rush, owner of the Blue Plate Taco, the customer was from Texas and was visiting Santa Monica. "The guest was from Dallas, visiting SM and commented on how sad SM has become. She will not be coming back or staying here again," Rush said in an email to the Daily Press.
In the surveillance footage, the thief appears to nonchalantly approach the table where the two ladies are dining before leaning in and grabbing her bag. Thankfully, the guest hung on tight and the thief was unable to take it, before he decided that fleeing was his next best option.
"We called the police but there was nothing they could do because there was no crime as he did not get the purse," Rush said.
Less than two months ago, an older white man walked up to the same parklet on Ocean Avenue carrying a half empty bottle of vodka and yelling "Happy New Year" became disruptive to guests and tourists.
"I personally apologized to several tables who said they had never stayed in SM before and were totally shocked with what they saw over the past few days and would not come back," Rush wrote in a Daily Press editorial in January.
"The disruptive man was then joined by a friend who came by smoking a joint, and they started getting into it. He was waving the bottle around and then moved all of his belongings into our parklet ... I went to take a photo, as I knew the police would request that, and he started getting hostile, flipped me off and then approached me and my coworkers yelling from afar that he was going to kill us and was using the bottle threateningly ... A few police cars drove by slowly on Ocean while this was going on and we tried to flag them down, but they continued to drive by," Rush wrote. And she often describes her restaurant's location as "being on the front line."
In her correspondence that detailed this most recent of incidents — which was also sent to the Chief of Police Ramon Batista, Mayor Phil Brock and other key members of the Santa Monica community — she wrote, "This is the third incident of purse theft where someone has grabbed someones belongings from the street and ran. As long as the streets are populated with disruptive people, we need to be able to keep our parklets protected. Outdoor dining is very popular in most beach cities and adds a nice feel, but guests and staff have to feel safe and protected in the parklets."
scott.snowden@smdp.com