Mr. Williams did not return calls on Wednesday, and the Fort Lauderdale police had little to say beyond a news release. But for the past year, electric scooters have been the source of much drama in southern Florida. In June, Fort Lauderdale banned scooters on the beach for the summer. The city also banned them during spring break, on holidays and during the Tortuga Music Festival in April.

Image Mr. Williams did not give the police a motive when he was arrested. Credit... Broward County Sheriff's Office

Farther afield, more than 100 electric scooters were dumped in Lake Merritt in Oakland, Calif., last year, while others were smeared with feces in Los Angeles. There is even an Instagram account, birdgraveyard, that documents the destruction of scooters used by two popular brands, Lime and Bird.

Steve Glassman, a Fort Lauderdale commissioner who approved the summer scooter ban, told The Sun-Sentinel in June, “It’s too much of a free-for-all out there.”

Mr. Williams did not give the police a motive when he was arrested. But the Fort Lauderdale police had been aware of the thefts for some time. In June, a representative for Lime, which rents electric scooters in Fort Lauderdale, filed a police incident report regarding a rash of vandalized scooters. (Many but not all of the 140 scooters damaged in the city since April belonged to Lime.)

As of July, the company said, 51 of its scooters had been damaged. That month, Lime told investigators it had captured a screenshot of a white man with clippers in hand, crouching near a row of scooters, and showed it to people in the area.