A Curfew Tolls and Balboa Is at Peace

The first weekend that Newport Beach police enforced the city’s new 11 p.m. curfew came off without a hitch, as the estimated 1,000 young people that crowded the Balboa Peninsula both Friday and Saturday nights obeyed police warnings and dispersed peacefully.

Despite concerns that enforcement of curfew might result in confrontations between police and teen-agers, no arrests for curfew violations were made Friday night or by late Saturday.

Although the police presence could be felt everywhere, the youths, whom local residents and merchants complained were a threat to business and public safety in the area, needed little prodding from police officers to go home.

Several television camera crews were on hand at the Balboa Pier Friday as the curfew hour struck, but the hordes of spectators packing the peninsula’s narrow streets and alleyways melted away shortly after the television crews departed.

Like Pulling a Plug

“This is nothing, thank God,” said Newport Beach Police Sgt. Mike Jackson, as he scanned the thinning crowd shortly before midnight. “As soon as the last two television units pulled out, it was like pulling a plug.”

Still, reaction to the curfew from the teen-agers crowding the peninsula remained largely negative, and some expressed feelings of powerlessness over their inability to do anything about it.

“The cops bust parties, and now they’re going to bust us for hanging out,” said 14-year-old Xochitl Gonzalez, who along with several older friends, occasionally visits the peninsula. “I don’t come here that often. I just come here to meet friends. We don’t pick fights or cause trouble.”

Gonzalez, however, said that if told by police to go home, she would have little choice. “There’s nothing I can do; it’s the law,” she said.

Curfew Fell Into Disuse

Newport Beach has had a curfew ordinance since 1949, but it fell into disuse in the late 1970s as curfew laws around the United States crumbled in the face of challenges to their constitutional validity.

Prompted, however, by complaints from local residents and business owners about hooliganism and vandalism by youths who crowd the peninsula, the Newport Beach City Council last Monday approved an updated curfew ordinance to discourage mischief in the seaside community.

Under the emergency curfew adopted by the council, police can stop minors on the streets after 11 p.m. and question them. Although certain activities, such as theatergoing, attending religious gatherings or school functions are protected, youths found to be “loitering” or “idling,” could be arrested.

Youths taken into custody for curfew violations are to be turned over to their parents and would not be held or transported with adults or other juveniles arrested for crimes, said Tom Little of the Newport Beach Police Department. Curfew violations would not result in any legal action against the minors, either, he added.

Juveniles traveling to or from work, as well as those who are accompanied by their parents, are exempt from the 11 p.m. curfew, a feature of the new law that one 15-year-old on the peninsula Friday was able to take advantage of.

As her mother followed at a discrete distance, Charla Miller and her friend Anna Connen, strolled up and down the street and along the pier.

Charla’s mother, Carole Miller, said she has been ferrying her daughter and friends from their neighborhood in Orange to the Balboa Peninsula for more than a year.

Discourages Mischief

“Sometimes, I take as many as 20 kids at a time out,” she said. “We come down in my camper and they party while I drive.”

As the two girls walked up the beach, their punk-rock hairdos silhouetted by the campfires, Miller said more parents should accompany their kids when they hang out, a practice she said that discourages youthful mischief.

Charla Miller, clad in army boots and a studded wrist band, said she enjoyed having her mother tag along along as she hung out on the peninsula. It’s cool,” she said. “Not many parents would do that for their kids.”

As the crowds thinned out, a small band of punk-rockers clustered in front of the Balboa Cinema, which screens the cult film “Rocky Horror Picture Show” every Friday at midnight. As the half-dozen punkers fidgeted, they complained of police harassment after the curfew began at 11 p.m.

Breaking the Monotony

“They told us they would take us to jail,” said one 18-year-old Covina resident. “I think that it’s because of the way we look that they harass us.” Desirae Innerarity said she and her friends, most of whom are under 18, come to Newport Beach to “break the monotony.”