High Tide of Violence at Aliso Beach : Rowdyism Taxes the Patience of Residents, Police

From her cliff-top home overlooking Aliso Beach Pier in South Laguna, Pam O’Neill has the perfect vantage point for watching the trouble down below.

Fistfights, car break-ins, drug deals and bonfire parties with drunken youths leaping through the flames--O’Neill has seen it all from her patio.

So it was with little surprise, she said, that she watched late Sunday night as some people in a crowd of about 300 beer-drinking youths lobbed rocks and bottles at police and paramedics who had responded to a stabbing near the pier.

15 Officers, Copter

It took about 15 police officers, assisted by a police helicopter, to break up the melee. The stabbing victim, Lance Christy, 20, of Dana Point, was rushed to Mission Community Hospital Trauma Center in Mission Viejo, where he was listed in fair condition Tuesday. The man suspected of stabbing him, Michael J. Munroe, 20, of Mission Viejo, was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder.

Afterwards, local residents such as O’Neill fumed that this was just the latest example of a growing problem with rowdyism at Aliso Beach Park, which encompasses the pier and is owned and operated by the county.

“This used to be a quiet little neighborhood,” said O’Neill, who operates a cake shop in Laguna Beach and is active in Orange County society circles. “Now, I’m feeling like I live over Coney Island.”

“They destroy our beaches. They park their cars in our driveways. And on top of that, they’re rude,” added another resident, who, fearing reprisal, asked to remain anonymous. “The abuse, the language, it’s disgusting.”

Since the city of Laguna Beach annexed South Laguna the first of this year, it has provided police patrols of Aliso Beach. Laguna Beach Police Chief Neil J. Purcell and City Manager Ken Frank both said Tuesday that they plan to ask county officials to change the park’s closing time from midnight to 10 p.m.

After 10 p.m., Purcell and Frank said, the park becomes a congregation point for hundreds of teen-agers.

“It’s a popular place for young people and it has been for years,” Purcell said.

Purcell also said he wants the county to give the city power to close the park whenever it becomes too crowded or people become too unruly.

Bob Wingard, director of the county’s Harbors, Beaches and Parks, said his office would consider any such proposal by the city.

Hoping to avoid a recurrence of the drunken violence of Sunday, county lifeguards at Aliso Beach began dispersing a crowd of about 2,000 by 9 p.m. and ordered the beach closed at 10 p.m. on the Fourth of July, said head lifeguard Jim Stauffer.

Stauffer said youths frequently drink themselves into a stupor and then endanger themselves and others by climbing behind the wheel for the drive back home.

“The bottom-line problem is if they get drunk down here they get in their cars and have to drive home,” Stauffer said. “If you could just get these people to go home and get drunk, it’d be better.”

Purcell said Aliso Beach became a popular teen-age hangout because the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, which had jurisdiction before Laguna Beach took over, was too understaffed to provide much watch over violations such as drinking and illegal fires.

Pockmarked With Coves

Aliso Beach is especially attractive as an after-hours meeting ground, Frank said, because there are no lights along the beach, which is pockmarked with coves and bluffs where youths can go without being seen from the road.

When the city took over patrols, Purcell said, he tried to crack down on parties and discourage teen-agers from congregating on that beach at night.

Before summer break, Purcell sent letters to principals of 35 high schools asking them to advise students that police would be out in force. Officers then began what Purcell calls “pro-active” patrols, in which officers look for violations rather than wait for people to complain. Police have since then been patrolling the park, both in cruisers and in four-wheel-drive beach vehicles.

But sometimes they have met resistance. During the Easter school break, Laguna Beach officers responding to a disturbance involving about 300 youths were pelted with bottles as teen-agers chanted: “Hell no, we won’t go!” Two officers were slightly hurt and their cars were showered with glass, Purcell said.

Trouble Erupted Again

On Sunday night, when trouble erupted again, police were caught a little short. At the same time the stabbing was reported at Aliso Beach, police were responding to fights at two Laguna nightspots. Consequently, Purcell said, the first two police officers who arrived at Aliso Beach found themselves vastly outnumbered by a crowd that had been fighting over an empty beer keg. The fight started, witnesses said, when Christy went after Munroe, who had allegedly taken the beer keg belonging to Christy’s group.

A fight began, and Munroe, a member of a second group, allegedly stabbed Christy. But Christy’s friends fought to keep police from reaching Munroe because they were beating him, Purcell said. Others in the crowd besides the two groups joined the fracas, he said.

Backup police officers wearing riot helmets waded into the crowd and extricated Munroe a short time later. He wasn’t seriously injured.

“The problem is once someone starts getting rowdy, unfortunately law-abiding people get caught up in that,” Purcell said. “People just start flinging things. And normally, it always involves drinking.”

To the chagrin of local residents, the rowdyism is not always confined to the beach. Gene Gores, a resident of the gated Camel Point subdivision perched above the south bluffs of the beach, said youths have stolen lumber from his fence to fuel their bonfires and have made obscene calls to residents from the phone at the complex’s entrance.

“We’ve had problems quite often,” Gores said. “They keep their bonfires going until 2 and 3 in the morning. I hear ‘em from my bedroom. They keep me awake.”

The reckless driving by intoxicated youths leaving the park also poses a threat to residents.

“I have seen at least seven fatalities from here,” O’Neill said, gesturing to the park entrance where she said most of the accidents have happened. “It’s gotten to the point that when we hear the screech marks of a crash we just dial 911--we don’t even look up.”

O’Neill said the park remains a haven for lawlessness despite the stepped-up police patrols.

“There is drug dealing going on down there. There are cars being ripped off. And it’s getting worse and worse,” O’Neill said. “It’s mayhem.”