When 64-year-old Martin Buxel came back to his room at the Town Center Hotel on the afternoon of May 1, he saw a Santa Maria police officer going from door to door asking people to search their apartments, and he knew that something wasn’t quite right. Buxel learned there was a purse snatching at the hookah shop next door several minutes earlier.
It wasn’t the fact that the officer—identified as Sylvester Swain—was making searches that Buxel found disturbing, but that according to Buxel, the officer gave the victim’s sister a flashlight, allowed her to pose as a cop, and let her search through residents’ apartments.
“You might as well give her a badge,” Buxel said. “The issue of having the woman posing as a cop is wrong. I think it’s illegal.”
He added that he was surprised at the ease with which a police officer was able to get permission to randomly search multiple homes in one sitting.
“Everyone was quite intimidated by him,” Buxel said.
Chief Ralph Martin from the Santa Maria Police Department was notified of the incident, but he can’t say much except that the matter is being investigated. According to Martin, Swain’s been on leave for some time for a medical matter.
The Sun wasn’t able to verify details of the incident with the SMPD, although employees at the hookah shop confirmed that there was a theft on May 1. After that, the details get murky.
Buxel said he was present in the hallway the moment Swain deputized the woman. Buxel noticed her from the group of people at the bottom of the stairwell. She followed Buxel to the second floor, where he first encountered Swain.
The two searched several apartments before reaching Buxel’s. Buxel remembered Swain walking up to him.
“Are you ready?” Buxel recalled Swain asking him.
Buxel complied and watched Swain do a quick sweep of the apartment. At the same time, Buxel noticed the woman digging through personal belongings in his bedroom. On the verge of becoming agitated, he told her to leave immediately.
When the encounter was finally over, Buxel said Swain didn’t exactly give him a sense of reassurance. He sensed that Swain didn’t like what he told the woman.
“Have a nice day, huh?” was the line that Buxel recalled Swain saying to him with a sarcastic tone. Buxel isn’t sure how many more apartments were searched after that.
The Sun reached out to City Attorney Gilbert Trujillo on the legality of using civilians to conduct searches, but messages were not immediately returned.
Upon learning more facts of the purse snatching, Buxel’s understanding of police investigative tactics went out the window. Buxel said he learned that the purse contained several thousand dollars and that descriptions of the suspect didn’t match any of the residents whose apartments were searched.
According to Buxel, the original story he received from Swain was that the suspect entered the building through the front door. Buxel said this is impossible because the apartment manager would have seen him because her office is in the line of sight of the front door. The suspect couldn’t have gone through the back either, Buxel said.
Buxel waited until the beginning of July to report the incident because he needed to convince his neighbors to come forward with their complaints. It’s becoming harder for him to track them down because the low-budget Town Center Hotel is in the process of being vacated due to damage from a fire that occurred two years ago.
The Sun tried to reach out to several other residents whose homes were searched, but calls were not immediately returned.
Buxel keeps following up with the SMPD, but Martin’s going by the book on this one.
“He [Swain] deserves the full bar of representation,” Martin said. “We have to do this legally.”
Buxel thinks it’s taking too long. “What does it take to give a man an honest answer?” he said.
What should happen exactly? In all of his 16 years of living and running his photography restoration business in Santa Maria, Buxel never had a serious problem with the police, he said. This time he felt his rights were violated, and all Buxel wants is for Swain to apologize.
“This man owes everyone an apology,” Buxel said, “a written apology.”
Staff Writer David Minsky can be reached at dminsky@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Sep 3-10, 2015.