Lifeguards Seek Broader Powers to Police Municipal Beaches

Chris Brewster admits that the idea of making lifeguards into cops scares a lot of people, probably because it conjures up the image of a sun-tanned teen-ager walking down the beach with a .38-caliber pistol strapped around his swim trunks.

But Brewster, a San Diego lifeguard with a passion for improving the lot of his fellow lifesavers, says the idea of giving full-time city lifeguards peace officer status--without guns--isn’t far-fetched at all.

Brewster says modern California beaches, especially those near metropolitan areas, have become jungles on hot summer days, with drug pushers, car thieves and child molesters milling among the beach balls, umbrellas and tourists soaked in coconut oil.

In many cases, lifeguards are the ones first called upon to respond to a crime on the beach or nearby. As public officers, they have the right to make misdemeanor arrests and issue citations. But when it comes to felonies, lifeguards are all but powerless.

“That limits our authority to make arrests, to keep a person from fleeing, to intervene in a fight situation,” said Brewster, a supervising lifeguard in San Diego and chairman of the California Lifesaving Assn.’s law enforcement committee. “The city is aware we’re involved in these things, but they can’t give us any specific authority to enforce the law. In effect, we’re acting as private citizens when we intervene.”

Brewster’s proposal to give city lifeguards some of the clout of police officers is among several he is advocating to revamp and clarify state laws governing lifeguards.

His other proposals, for which the City of San Diego is seeking support in the Legislature, would:

- Give lifeguards the power to remove unattended vessels from public waterways. Current law states that only peace officers may tow unattended boats, but lifeguards, especially those who patrol bays and inlets, often come across boats that are drifting into danger.

- Grant lifeguards authority to close public beaches and other areas in an emergency. Under current law, the California Highway Patrol, state police, local police officers, sheriff’s deputies and designated officers of the state Departments of Forestry and Parks and Recreation have this power.

- Designate lifeguards as emergency safety personnel, like police and firefighters, in order to prohibit public interference with lifeguards conducting their official duties.

Assemblywoman Sunny Mojonnier (R-Encinitas) has included the proposals in two bills she introduced this month.

“What we’re trying to do is give them the authority to do the job when there’s a dangerous situation,” said Chris Heiserman, an aide to Mojonnier. “We need to give them the tools to do their job a little better.”

The lifeguards’ proposals embraced by Mojonnier have generated little controversy to date and are expected to move through the Legislature without much problem. But Brewster’s idea of allowing cities to grant peace officer status to their lifeguards is having more of a struggle.

The lifeguards and their Sacramento lobbyists were not able to find a member of the Legislature to author such a measure by Friday’s deadline for introducing bills in this session. They are now searching for a member to amend the proposal onto an existing bill, but talk of the proposal is already spurring interest--and concern--from the law enforcement community and others for whom equating lifeguards with cops is a troubling notion.

Permanent lifeguards at most state beaches have for years been fully trained, armed police officers who are graduates of a state police academy in Monterey, as well as certified lifesavers. State lifeguards at

Coronado’s Silver Strand and on state beaches in North County have had police officer status since 1971.

But the idea of giving city lifeguards similar training and responsibility, even without the weapons, seems foreign to many.

John Scribner, a lobbyist for the Peace Officers Research Assn. of California, a professional group, said his organization looks with skepticism upon any attempt to broaden the definition of peace officer status.

“We always view with concern any group that comes along and requests to be included in the peace officer category and to have the powers that go along with that,” Scribner said.

Bob Burgreen, San Diego’s assistant police chief, said he also wonders whether it would be wise to grant police powers to lifeguards. Burgreen said he believes his department’s 26-officer summertime beach enforcement team is sufficient to fight crime on or near the beaches.

“The lifeguards’ job is to keep people from getting into hazardous situations in the water, and if someone is in a hazardous situation, to rescue them,” Burgreen said. “The other jobs are jobs they’re not trained to do but are often caught in the middle of. The question is how much training and equipment should we give them so they can at least hold down the fort until we get there.”

Burgreen said the department is willing to consider supporting some change in the lifeguards’ status. But he said he favors a clear separation between the duties and powers of the two agencies.

“A lifeguard’s principal duty is to protect life,” Burgreen said. “They should be sitting on the sand looking west. They shouldn’t be looking east into the parking lot for car prowlers.”

But Brewster said such critics misunderstand his proposal, which has been endorsed by the California Lifesaving Assn. He said the idea is not so much to expand the power of lifeguards as to give them clearer authority to handle situations they already face every day. He suggests park rangers, rather than police, would be a more apt comparison for the status he seeks.

Currently, San Diego lifeguards are designated as public officers, which gives them authority to write misdemeanor citations and to make some arrests. But because they are not peace officers, lifeguards do not have specific authority to make felony arrests and are thus more vulnerable to lawsuits should they arrest someone without proper cause or injure a suspect in a scuffle.

“The extent of involvement we are aiming at is no greater than our involvement is right now,” Brewster said. “We are not requesting nor are we interested in having firearms. We’re not interested in transporting prisoners to jail. All we’re asking for is authority to do what we’re already doing.”

Brewster likes to draw a little word picture to illustrate the problem:

A man is walking down a beachfront boardwalk carrying a bottle of beer, in violation of local laws. A lifeguard sees the man and moves toward him to enforce the law, telling him to get rid of the bottle or face receiving a misdemeanor citation.

Instead, the man takes the bottle and breaks it over the lifeguard’s head. Now the man is committing felony battery. But in doing so, he has taken his case out of the jurisdiction of the lifeguard, who can enforce misdemeanors but lacks the power to make felony arrests.

“It really becomes ludicrous,” Brewster says, admitting the scenario is an extreme example of the problem he is working to correct. A more common problem, he said, is the public’s belief that they need not obey the commands of a lifeguard because the guards lack the clout to back up their position.

“I can’t tell you how many times we’re told by someone we’re asking to leave the beach with a bottle, ‘Hey, you’re a lifeguard, you can’t tell me this,’ ” Brewster said. “That means the lifeguard is tied up even longer explaining the authority he does have. In some cases, it means not even being able to enforce it until a police officer arrives.”

Dave Twomey, an administrator in San Diego’s Park and Recreation Department, said city officials “agonized” over the issue before agreeing to support the lifeguards’ effort. The question has yet to reach the City Council.

“We don’t want them doing the work of police officers,” Twomey said. “As soon as any situation can be turned over to police, that’s the way it should be. But sometimes our lifeguards are thrust into a situation where any citizen would be compelled to intervene, where someone is trying to protect property or someone is abusing a child. To say we can’t intervene there just doesn’t make sense.”

Although other lifeguard agencies in California are supporting the effort, so far San Diego’s lifeguards seem to be the only ones eager to seek the elevated status.

The chiefs of several Orange County lifeguard agencies, for example, said in interviews that they are comfortable with their powers and seek no change. Bruce Baird, the head lifeguard for Laguna Beach, said his staff doesn’t even have the power to write citations--and doesn’t want it.

“In our situation, it isn’t really necessary,” he said. “We have good relations with the Police Department and they do back us up.”

Grant Larson, chief lifeguard in Del Mar, said that city is considering elevating its lifeguards to the public officer status already enjoyed by San Diego’s crew. He said such a move would satisfy his only concerns.

“In five years, if this area grows like it’s supposed to and we get all the related problems that large concentrations of people bring, we’d take a look at it,” Larson said. “I can see some advantages to legislation that would enable a city or jurisdiction to say ‘OK, the time has come, let’s give these guys more training and responsibility.’ I don’t believe that time has come yet for Del Mar.”