Police Keeping a High Profile in Newport as Fourth Begins

Three youths sat on the curb at Seashore Drive watching disconsolately as Newport Beach police officers impounded a Kawasaki Ninja 600 motorcycle with an illegally modified exhaust.

“It’s harassment,” muttered Art McCormick, 18, of Huntington Beach. “They’re stopping us for not doing anything. I just stood up and they started yelling at me.”

Call it harassment. Call it strict enforcement of the law.

It was Friday, the third of July, and in Newport Beach police were out in force.

By their high profile, they were hoping to prevent a repeat of the 1986 Fourth of July melee, a late-night free-for-all of thrown rocks, bottles and firecrackers in which one police officer was injured, 159 people were arrested and the area around Seashore Drive was carpeted with broken glass.

Police on 12-Hour Shifts

By Friday afternoon, 215 officers had started to work 12-hour shifts. There were 150 from Newport Beach, 20 from the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, 20 from the California Highway Patrol and 20 loaned from other cities in Orange County for the holiday weekend.

“It’s going to be high visibility--strict enforcement of littering, drinking in public, minors in possession of alcohol,” department spokesman Kent Stoddard said Friday. “We expect some activity tonight, but we expect most of our problems to come tomorrow.”

Detective Mark Fisher, normally assigned to Newport’s fraud division, patrolled Seashore Drive Friday night in a squad car.

“There are a lot of people here but not too much activity yet. It’s tomorrow night we worry about,” Fisher said as he and Officer Rick Bradley finished citing the three teen-agers on the curb.

“This is the level of activity we like to see--everything nice and quiet and no problems,” Bradley added.

It was a far cry from last year, he said, when “people went completely nuts . . . when it was too many people, too much alcohol and a complete disregard for the law.”

But this year, Newport Beach police went out of their way to remind residents of the law.

Following the example of police in another riot-prone town, Palm Springs, officers distributed 20,000 brochures to high school students and summer renters. “Have Fun . . . Within The Law,” the pamphlets said, noting that loud music, drug use and disturbing the peace would invite arrests.

At 6 a.m. Friday city maintenance workers began placing barricades on street corners on the Balboa Peninsula to be used tonight to decrease the flow of traffic that chokes peninsula streets and makes passage for police difficult.

Barricades Planned

Orange and white wooden barricades affixed with “Road Closed” signs leaned against light posts along Balboa Boulevard from 32nd to 54th Street. Maintenance workers placed metal trash cans filled with concrete at the corner of 32nd Street and Balboa Boulevard. They’ll be used in chaining off that main intersection.

Police plan to barricade almost a mile of Seashore Drive from 32nd to 54th streets and to cordon off 100 blocks bounded by those streets from 6 p.m. today to 3 a.m. tomorrow. Drivers trapped in the barricaded zone can leave the area at three exit points.

“They’re going to isolate this entire beach,” said Mike Theisen, a city worker constructing barricades on Balboa Boulevard Friday afternoon.

“This is where all the problems were. These are the summer rentals. . . . Still, traffic is going to be something else down here. It’s going to be crowded and crazy, and I don’t want to be anywhere near it.”

A shopkeeper at a small mall nearby said that police visited the mall last July 5 to photograph the wreckage from the Fourth of July melee.

“The parking lot was knee deep in trash,” said the shopkeeper, who requested that his name and his business not be used. “There were bikes and women’s underwear in the trees.”

Bottle Precautions

Police Lt. Gary Petersen said Friday that police officials were taking no chances on a riot’s repetition and that merchants had been asked not to sell bottled beverages on Friday and Saturday.

“We asked them to take Corona and other bottles off the shelf for tonight and tomorrow,” Petersen said.

“What we asked them to do ideally was to sell nothing but canned beverages. We have compliance with all the liquor stores, 7-Eleven. The local merchants have been extremely cooperative.”

An occasional police officer dressed in tube socks, hiking shorts and tennis shoes strolled along the beach, but Petersen said Friday afternoon that there was “no unusual activity other than more traffic than usual for a summer weekend.”