City Council Votes to Form Panel to Study Riot at Surf Contest

After 2 1/2 hours of emotional testimony and debate, the Huntington Beach City Council voted Tuesday night to form a nine-member committee to review and evaluate the circumstances of Sunday’s riot during the annual Op Pro Surfing Championships.

Mayor Robert P. Mandic Jr. said the committee will make recommendations on how next year’s surfing competition should be handled to avoid a repetition of this year’s Labor Day weekend violence.

“I’m sorry,” Mandic said. “I feel frustrated. In my heart I don’t know what else we could have done.”

The committee will include Mandic, council members Ruth Bailey and Don MacAllister, the city administrator and representatives from the city’s Youth Board, Police Department, and Harbor and Beach Department. Also on the committee will be a representative of professional surfing and an as yet unnamed private citizen.

More than 300 people had jammed Huntington Beach City Hall earlier in the evening, many of them urging the City Council to bring the Op Pro Surfing Championships back next year despite the violence that erupted near the contest.

Sprinkling of Young Faces

The audience at the council’s regularly scheduled meeting was sprinkled with young faces, mostly teen-age boys who were worried that they would no longer be able to watch the ultimate contest of their favorite sport.

But there also was a contingent there to claim that innocent bystanders trapped by the raging mob were injured at the hands of police and to argue that the annual event should be better organized if it is to continue in the city.

Poignant testimony came from the parents of a 15-year-old boy who was shocked by a police taser gun and knocked to the ground with a police club while trying to get away from the oncoming mob.

Lenni Wood Ayres, the mother of Scott Wood, was visibly shaken and angry about police behavior during Sunday’s riot. “My son was an innocent bystander who came to watch the surfing contest. He and his friends were trapped when they heard distant rumbling. The crowd and police started to push him, and he was tasered from behind.”

Scott, who was released from a hospital Tuesday with a laceration on his skull and other bruises, told his mother he saw “yellow” when he was struck by the taser. As he tried to crawl away, an officer from another law enforcement agency outside Huntington Beach allegedly clubbed him on the back of the neck.

“His friends carried him to the street, where my son collapsed in a pool of blood until an ambulance came,” said the boy’s mother. “My son never saw the face of a policeman. He had nothing to do with the riot or police. He was running because he was scared. This has been an incredible ordeal for him.”

Earlier in her testimony, Ayres said her son was trying to help a little girl who was crying when police arrived.

Police Capt. Bill Payne, who is acting chief while Huntington Beach Police Chief Earl Robitaille is on vacation, told The Times Tuesday night that, in order to determine exactly what happened on Sunday, he “will have to look at individual incidents from the individuals involved.”

Payne said that the department had received only four complaints so far and that they were “not representative of some of the horrendous things I heard tonight.”

Asked whether the Police Department was prepared for Sunday’s surfing event, Payne said: “We did a lot of planning and had meetings six months prior to the event. We would have liked to have had more officers, but you have to take into consideration the cost. Even if we had 100 or 200 officers, it wouldn’t have made a difference once the riot got started.”

Marie Hughes, a Huntington Beach mother, told the council: “I’m really scared right now. My son was there. . . . I won’t let my kids go down to the beach next year. I don’t know why this has not been organized. If you people don’t know how to organize this, I don’t want the Op (surfing contest) held here. Don’t you understand what’s going on? You don’t have enough people out there.”

“Just because some jerks from another city cause trouble, that’s no reason to end it for all of us,” said Patrick Knapp, 21, a surfer who watched the finals at the beach Sunday.

Fellow surfer Tom McClane, 19, agreed.

“They just need more police,” he said.

The riot erupted Sunday afternoon behind the bleachers being used for the final day of the professional surfing competition, which drew a crowd estimated at 100,000.

Police said at least 12 people were injured, including five Huntington Beach police officers and one Orange County sheriff’s deputy. Before the rampage ended, 156 officers from surrounding Orange County police agencies were called in to assist the 20 Huntington Beach police officers who were assigned to handle the Labor Day weekend beach crowd.

Many of the people who came to testify before the council Tuesday night suggested that if the event cost the city additional money for law enforcement, that cost could be passed on to operators of the event. In addition, other suggestions that had been voiced in the past few days were repeated, including moving the event to a weekend other than Labor Day and having more police on hand at the start.

Vehicles Burned

Sgt. Larry Miller testified that, in addition to six city vehicles that were burned Sunday, rioters apparently damaged nine privately owned cars by jumping up and down on their hoods and roofs. Miller said they also had stolen eight bicycles, four surfboards, five paddle boards, 12 wet suits, a resuscitator and miscellaneous scuba equipment.

“We have tentatively identified four suspects on the arson (the burning of police cars),” Miller said.

One surprising development, Miller said, was an outpouring of citizen support for the police, “which is unprecedented for this city, let me tell you.”

One citizen sent in a $100 check, and another sent in flowers, he said.