Police Will Monitor Volume of Concert at the Equidome

The Los Angeles police said Wednesday that they will monitor a concert at the Los Angeles Equestrian Center in Griffith Park to see if the sound exceeds the legal limit.

“Based on what has been told to us, we have reason to believe there may have been a violation, but we are not sure at the moment,” police Lt. Ray Turner said.

Burbank City Atty. Doug Holland said he asked Los Angeles to investigate because the Three Dog Night concert Saturday seemed loud in Burbank, the boundary of which is about a block from the center.

Burbank officials monitored the concert with decibel meters from a condominium project 500 feet away. They said they could hear the music clearly but that the sound appeared to fall within legal limits. The peak reading of 76 decibels fell between the noise generated by a vacuum cleaner, 80 decibels, and busy traffic, 70.

Under a Los Angeles ordinance, sound coming from amplifiers shall not be audible more than 200 feet from the source.

Lt. Turner said officers will monitor a concert in the next few months. If it is too loud, the police will ask the center’s management to make it quieter, he said.

The equestrian center’s president, J. Albert Garcia, greeted the news of the imminent investigation with anger.

“Saturday night I was a hero with Burbank officials, and today I’m a bum,” he said. “I’m very disappointed. All of a sudden, the noise has become an issue again, even though I complied with the law Saturday.”

The Three Dog Night concert was the first in a summer series intended to lure a larger audience to the financially troubled center by combining music with polo matches. The next concert, by country group Sawyer Brown, is scheduled for Saturday.

Garcia said workers are installing barriers to try to keep the sound inside the Equidome.