Trouble in the Country : Crime Spree by Teens Rocks Rural Ramona

“Well ya got trouble, my friend--right here, I say trouble right here in River City.” --From the Broadway musical, “The Music Man”

Country living has gone haywire in Ramona. Something glitched.

It’s not a problem of boys hanging out in pool halls, as itinerant con man Harold Hill chimed in River City, Iowa. Ramona, it could be argued, should be so lucky.

This is a problem of teen-age skateboarders bored out of their gourds in Ramona, population 23,000, lashing out at authorities and getting into mischief. Serious mischief.

By Friday afternoon, 26 local children between the ages of 11 and 17, as well as a 20-year-old, had been arrested for a three-month-long felony crime spree costing more than $50,000--and an unknown toll in family life.

Bizarre Episode

It’s as bizarre an episode as one could expect to find in a country town where one of the main hangouts is McDonalds, along eucalyptus tree-lined Main Street.

It began with a distressed father searching for clues to the whereabouts of his runaway 14-year-old daughter. He found more than he bargained for when he discovered and read her diary--which contained references to “frying” on the psychedelic drug LSD in study hall at Ramona High School.

He read further, tore out some of the pages and turned them over to Sheriff’s Department Detective Mike Mercurio, a boyish-looking cop who would serve Miami Vice well and who specializes in juvenile crime in this neck of the woods, where Californias 67 and 78 meet, 30 miles northeast of San Diego.

“This might make for some real interesting reading,” the father told Mercurio in understated fashion. “It might help you solve some cases.”

Indeed it did.

Bomb Threat Link

The diary’s most incriminating entry--aside from references to LSD--mentioned only the first name of a boy who phoned a bomb threat to Ramona High School several months earlier.

“We contacted him at school, admonished him as to his rights and he agreed to talk to us,” Mercurio said. “We said, ‘You know why we’re here.’ And he said, ‘Yeah, I guess so--but I only did two of them.’ And then he started talking about all these burglaries.”

For his part, the boy--independently contacted by The Times--said he was set up by detectives into believing his name had already been given by others, and lured into spilling his guts. His mother said he will contact an attorney to press her concern that the 16-year-old did not realize he had the right to remain silent.

In any event, Mercurio realized that he had fortuitously stumbled upon more than just clearing up the bomb threat and was about to unravel the biggest crime spree in the history of Ramona, dramatically overshadowing problems of smoking behind the barn or overturning outhouses.

The boy’s confession led to other suspects, who then named still more. The scoreboard by Friday showed 22 cases believed solved, and 27 persons--26 juveniles and one 20-year-old--arrested. The district attorney’s office is awaiting the police report before deciding which cases to prosecute.

Life in the Country

The unraveling story has exposed more than the crime spree. It has exposed one of the fallacies of supposedly idyllic country life: That it is a panacea for families seeking to escape the cliche pitfalls of the big city.

“We moved here to get out of the city,” sighed the mother of one of the teen-age boys suspected of the crimes. “This is a nice place to raise a family, but it turns out the same kinds of things happen here that can happen in El Cajon.”

Observed Rob Oliphant, a juvenile probation officer for the county, “Ramona is becoming a bedroom community to San Diego for people who think moving out to the country would take care of problems they’re trying to leave behind.

“But they’re just taking their big-city problems with them. You’ve got kids with nothing to do, no place to go, and mom and dad don’t come home from work until evening. The kids are bored, and idle time takes over,” he said.

Admitted Crimes

Among the crimes to which the youngsters have admitted:

- Breaking into the Ramona Lutheran

Church on three separate occasions--and taking flags, a robe, a schoolteacher’s desk-top brass bell and other trinkets to serve as souvenirs of their mischief. Yet they passed over computers and more valuable items within their grasp.

- Breaking into Olive Pierce Junior High School and emptying a dry chemical fire extinguisher into a computer, at a loss estimated at $5,000.

- Breaking into a liquor store and taking only a six-pack of beer.

- Breaking into an unoccupied house for a party that lasted for three days and ended with an estimated $15,000 in destruction to its interior. Walls were bashed, windows and mirrors shattered, dry wall busted, cabinet doors torn off hinges, light fixtures ripped free and appliance doors skewed.

- Breaking into vending machines on the high school campus for candy, and breaking windows on several Ramona school campuses.

The incident that in retrospect triggered the crime spree occurred last November when 12 of the teen-agers, frustrated that there was no active skateboard club at the high school, broke into a maintenance closet during a basketball game, took out several gallons of paint and painted the school’s tennis courts with slogans common among skateboarders.

One of the participants boasted that he and the others did it “to get even--and we got away with it for two months.”

The students have since been identified for that and other vandalism at the school, and all now face expulsion hearings beginning next week before the Ramona school board, said school Principal Jim Roulsten.

Officials are quick to point out that this small-town juvenile crime wave, as sensational as it sounds, involves only a couple dozen teen-agers on a high school campus with 1,300 students. And indeed, other teen-agers in town, including innocent skateboarders, say they are glad that this particular group has been rounded up--although, they agree, their skateboarding activities are as welcomed as the plague.

As the case continues to unfold, sheriff’s investigators say even more crimes of burglary and vandalism may be connected to the group.

Actions Blamed on Boredom

Those teen culprits interviewed by The Times blame their actions on the boredom which festers in this country town--where there’s not a bowling alley, a youth club, a YMCA or any other source of organized activities or supervision to fill the void of idle time. “We’re up here for the clean air,” one teen-ager said facetiously. Said another, “We hear a K mart will be opening. That’s exciting.”

So their pastime is skateboarding, and they say they were lashing out at stodgy school officials, townsfolk and sheriff’s deputies who had no tolerance for their love of the sport--and their propensity to ride along city streets and shopping center parking lots.

“Someone’s gonna get killed someday,” said one store manager in town who has confiscated a host of skateboards from youngsters riding across his parking lot. Company policy, he said, prohibited him from identifying himself.

“They’re either going to be run over by a car in the parking lot, or they’re going to hit some old lady,” he said. “They’re just kids with not a lot to do, but they don’t see the danger in skateboarding. You can’t really fault them. They’re kids. Are they going to sit home and read a book? Let’s be realistic.”

Said one of the skateboarders, “We were all being harassed by the cops, the store managers, everyone. We just mind our own business and ride our skateboards in town, and the cops will drive up, start cussing at us and threaten to take our boards away.”

Trouble ‘Just Happens’

Said a 16-year-old, who admitted to letting his friends into the neighbor’s empty house for the three-day-long party, “We’re not out looking for trouble. It just happens.”

“You try to skate (board) in this town but it’s impossible,” he complained. “At the 7-Eleven store, a cop said we were loitering and told us to get lost even though there were people sitting around smoking and other kids were riding their bikes doing tricks, and they weren’t hassled at all.”

Said another teen-age boy who admitted to participating in the school vandalism, “We just kind of did it. We didn’t do it for any reason, really, but just for the hell of it.”

The parents of those youngsters say, almost to a one, that their children are good kids whose boredom and frustrations over not being allowed to skateboard freely in town led to mischief that got out of hand. Had the schools and community cared more, this would not have occurred, they say.

“The kids didn’t realize what they were getting into,” said the mother of one of the juvenile suspects. “Most of them are sorry for it.”

The woman said both she and her husband work, but expressed confidence that her son behaves in their absence.

“He just skates. That’s all I know,” she said. “But he calls me at work, so I know where he’s at. As far as them doing anything that’s a terrible crime, they’re kids, and they made a mistake and most of them are sorry.”

Schools Blamed

The working parents of a 16-year-old blamed school officials, saying they affirm youngsters with A and B grades, but pay little attention to the average students such as their own son.

“The schools should pay more attention to kids like mine,” the father complained.

Still, he said he was unable to explain why his son participated in the vandalism at the unoccupied home. “We’re completely baffled by that,” he said. “It’s incomprehensible that they would do that--or even be just a witness to it. I still can’t believe it.

“I don’t know if any of his behavior came from me,” said the father, who added that he and his wife have talked into the night trying to rationalize their child’s rebellious acts.

“We blamed each other and we blamed ourselves. All I know is that the kids are totally dissatisfied with the schools, and the schools have more control over the kids’ attitudes than parents do.”

Said his wife, “The kids got frustrated and this is what they did. ‘Let’s strike back where we can hurt.’ It escalated and snowballed. There are some bad kids involved, and some good kids involved.”

No Broad Explanation

The stepmother of the girl whose diary brought the spree to an end said she was unwilling to explain what happened in broad fashion.

“All these kids are individuals, with individual problems. It’s not fair to group them as a whole,” she said.

In her case, she said, the family had recently moved to Ramona from San Diego in order to capitalize on Ramona’s property values and its country ambiance.

The girl, already traumatized by a divorce in the family, had run away previously, her stepmother said. “The change (in life style) was a shock to all of us. We’re city people and moving to the country was a big change for the kids and ourselves as well.”

She said both she and the girl’s father work in San Diego, but did not believe their absence contributed to the girl’s troubles. So what went wrong? “That’s the big question we keep plugging away at,” she said.

School Principal Roulsten said the arrested students told him they were caught up in the crimes by “peer pressure,” but the students themselves are unable to identify a leader among them.

“They talked themselves into trying some things that are outside the law,” he said. “They egged each other on. They’re not social psychopaths. Some of the kids are real nice and are fine on campus. The majority were not a problem. We knew most of them in a positive way.”

Activities for Youth

Mercurio, the detective, admitted frustration toward the parents of some of the juvenile suspects.

“They let their guard down in raising their kids. They haven’t drawn the line with their kids. And they say if the Sheriff’s Department opened up a recreation center, these kids wouldn’t be in trouble. So now they want to take us from criminal investigations and into the amusement business.”

The Rev. Luther Hasz , pastor of the Ramona Lutheran Church that was hit three times, said the Ramona Ministerial Assn. has addressed the problem of idle youth, but has not come up with how to deal with it.

“It’s true that Ramona provides a good atmosphere and background for raising kids to 8 or 10, but when they get to be in high school, Ramona doesn’t hold much interest for them,” he said.

One church in town--the Victory Chapel Foursquare Church, which occupies the oldest church building in Ramona, on Main Street--is trying to establish a youth drop-in center with games and activities to help keep the teen-agers occupied. It is still struggling for the funds to complete the project.

“A lot of people are coming up here to escape the asphalt jungle,” said the Rev. Ray Zeigler, the pastor. “The problem is that while we’re getting a lot of talented people, they’re hiding under the rocks. They don’t want to commit themselves to local activities.

“I had that same problem, before I became a minister,” he said. “I’d work in San Diego and by the time I got home up here at night, I was wiped out and still had an acre of land to clean and a cow to feed. I couldn’t involve myself in the community like I’d wanted to.”

Zeigler noted that his church has had troubles even organizing a Boy Scout troop for lack of adult volunteers to serve as leaders.

He suggested that parents of teen-agers surrounded themselves in a false sense of security after moving to Ramona. “You arrive in town and you think that by moving away from all the problems, you’ve solved the problem when in fact it’s still there.”