Samuel Albrecht
SANTA BARBARA COUNTY — Many of us traditionally celebrate Independence Day with displays of fireworks meant to symbolize, if not accurately replicate, the pyrotechnics that followed King George’s reading of The Declaration of Independence.
It should be noted, however, that following our colonial resistance to a long list of imposed laws, over the intervening 240 years we’ve managed to circumscribe our own behaviors and actions with a surfeit of legislated limits on individual behavior.
In Santa Barbara County, one of those restrictions speaks directly to the possession and use of “illegal fireworks.” 22-year-old and Santa Maria resident Samuel Albrecht acted in apparent disregard of those proscriptions. On June 23rd—more than a full week before July 4th—he was found to be in possession of twelve cases of illegal fireworks.
According to Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department Public Information Officer Kelly Hoover, the discovery of the contraband pyrotechnics was made by Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department deputies who responded to neighborhood reports of “loud fireworks” emanating from Albrecht’s residence.
Deputies were initially stymied in their attempts to contact those inside the home, as the residents had “appeared to have turned off all their lights and refused to answer the door.”
Hardly daunted by this lame attempt to avoid eye contact with anyone in uniform, deputies conducted some rudimentary investigation and determined that Albrecht had, in fact, “two active warrants for his arrest and was on active county probation with full search and seizure terms.”
With that information in hand, deputies returned to the residence to conduct their business on those terms and discovered Albrecht “hiding in a bathroom.”
Albrecht was summarily arrested for the warrants, and the probation search revealed the aforementioned fireworks.
He was transported to Santa Barbara County Jail where he currently resides on a no bail hold.
Photo: Courtesy Santa Barbara County Jail Booking
