Defendant in Trailer Fire Pleads Not Guilty

A Long Beach man pleaded not guilty Tuesday to felony charges of setting fire to a vacant trailer that had been donated to the city for conversion into a police substation.

Investigators say Alvin Miles, 35, told friends that he had burned the mobile home late Friday because he didn’t want a police facility near his North Long Beach apartment.

The trailer, located two miles from the Police Department’s North Division headquarters, was expected to serve as a storefront police center where residents could report crimes and sign up for Neighborhood Watch programs. It was destroyed in the fire, with damages estimated at $40,000, officials said.

When a canine unit indicated that a flammable liquid had been used to start the fire, Long Beach police and arson detectives conducted a sweep near Atlantic Avenue and Harding Street, where the trailer had been dropped off less than a week earlier. They arrested Miles and three others Sunday, but soon released the other men.

On Tuesday the district attorney’s office filed one count of arson with great bodily injury against Miles. A fire captain broke two bones in his hand while trying to extinguish the blaze. A second count of discharging a firearm with gross negligence stems from allegations that the defendant fired a gun into the air shortly before the fire was set.

Miles’ pretrial hearing has been set for next Tuesday. He faces a maximum of 12 years in prison if convicted on both counts.

City Councilman Jerry Shultz, who had asked an area business owner to donate the trailer, said he has already asked the same donor to deliver a substitute trailer. Shultz added that the original trailer had not been outfitted with police equipment because it was deemed too large.

“[The fire] does not change our plans whatsoever,” Shultz said.