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Officials strategize to control party day
by Robb Fulcher
The city council will meet in special session 7:10 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 28, to discuss Hermosa's unofficial Fourth of July celebrations and plan strategies for containing party noise, public drinking and some fist fighting that occurred this year.
Also included in the discussions at the city council chambers will be neighbors' ongoing complaints of noise from patrons leaving Pier Plaza bars.
The council will hear from City Attorney Michael Jenkins, who has been working to make it easier for police to enforce Hermosa's ordinance regulating amplified noise. The current ordinance requires officials to use machines to measure decibel levels of noise from parties or loud music.
"It's very difficult to do decibel readings, and to separate ambient noise from the offending noise," Jenkins said. "We're going to try a different approach, one that uses more 'reasonable person' type standards, and distance standards that say 'this kind of noise should not be heard at this distance.'"
Some council members and residents have asked for stiffer penalties for people who break the ordinance, but Jenkins said that state law forbids any significantly stiffer penalties.
Mayor JR Reviczky has complained that some well-to-do Strand residents simply laugh off excessive-noise citations. During this year's Fourth of July partying, a police officer approached a Strand resident as he was setting up a professional sound system, and the man asked, "Can I just pay the citation now?"
Hermosa Police said this year's Fourth was louder and wilder than the year before, but for the most part noise, rowdiness and public drinking were the biggest problems.
At a public workshop shortly after Independence Day, some council members and residents suggested that police show a stronger presence in the party-hearty Strand area earlier in the day, in an effort to contain the noise and drunkenness before things get out of hand.
Critics said that officers were deployed heavily at the "Ironman" chugalug, a 26-year-old morning event in which about 150 people run on the beach, paddle in the ocean, dash to a private front yard to down a six-pack of beer and then try, with little success, not to vomit.
Critics said that by the time the Ironman ended and the officers moved toward the Strand, partying there had grown beyond containment.
"The police department has to put a lot of people [at the Ironman] and the department is held hostage until about 2 p.m.," Councilwoman Kathy Dunbabin said. "If they didn't have to be there they could be down on the Strand shutting things down and keeping things together."
Police Chief Val Straser said that next year officers will begin corralling the rowdiness in the Strand area earlier in the day, in hopes that the vastly outnumbered police will be able to establish more control over the eventual level of disorder and noise.
Straser said he does not want to supplement his police force with out-of-town officers, who might lose restraint while keeping order in areas where they do not regularly work.
He said cool heads are needed to deal with Independence Day revelers. A Fourth of July riot in 1974 was touched off when a Hermosa officer hopped up onto the Strand wall and told a large group of people that they were all under arrest, Straser said. Rioters threw rocks and beer bottles full of sand at police, broke windows and tried to overturn police cars.
This year, Straser said, an evening fireworks show in neighboring Redondo Beach drew "waves" of people to Hermosa, where they increased the crowds by moving south along the Strand, then back again after the show.
Hermosa officials even asked Redondo to cancel the fireworks shows, a suggestion that was all but laughed off in the neighboring town.
Redondo Mayor Greg Hill said crowds flocked to Hermosa because of its reputation as a party town, pointing to the widespread popularity of the three-year-old Pier Plaza. ER