Complaints Force an Early Finish for Benefit Concert

Organizers of an annual holiday benefit concert were forced to pull the plug earlier than planned on Sunday after authorities received complaints about noise and traffic, the event’s organizers said Monday.

A preliminary tally showed that the concert produced only $1,000 worth of toys, roughly one-quarter the amount gathered in past years, said Joyce Herbert, who organized the Third Annual Reggae Fund Raiser for the Orangewood Home for abused children, held at Laguna Hills’ Iglesia Community Center.

“We were very disappointed,” Herbert said. “A lot of people called and said they didn’t come because within the last few months, every time there’s an activity at the center, it’s been closed down” by authorities.

A spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, which has jurisdiction over the unincorporated area where the center is located, said that three complaints of “loud noise” were received and that after the third, organizers ended the concert when a sergeant told them that the noise would have to stop or he would shut the event down.

A center official refused to comment and referred questions to her superiors, who were unavailable Monday.

But Herbert said that around 7 p.m., shortly after the concert had begun, a sheriff’s deputy arrived at the center and told her that a neighbor had complained of “too much noise. He stayed for about an hour and said, ‘Everything sounds fine--just keep the door closed,’ which we did.”

At 10 p.m., Herbert said, she ended the concert 30 minutes early when another deputy arrived and reported a second complaint about noise and about street parking by concert-goers. Herbert said she was told she could be arrested if the neighbor persisted with the complaint.

Herbert, a singer and Laguna Hills resident who was to have performed in the concert, said she was perplexed by the complaints.

“I don’t understand how you can have one or two persons call up and stop an event that’s a fund-raiser for a worthy cause and that’s helping young kids to expend energy,” she said. “We’ve done this for four years and never been closed down before and never had a problem.”