2 Beach Parking Lots to Close at Night : Crime: Closure was prompted by recent violence and deaths. Controversial idea of alcohol ban at the beach must still be resolved.

From atop his surf shop where he has a wooden perch of an office, Ray Hamel can stare down a long stretch of South Mission Beach and see what attracts thousands of tourists to the area each year.

To his right, the sand and ocean. To his left, a string of bars and restaurants.

More and more these days, he doesn’t like the look in either direction.

Knots of men rest along the seawall that separates the sand from the boardwalk, sipping beer at a time in the morning when most people are reaching for a first cup of coffee.

Six weeks ago, a young man racing from a group of five others reached inside Hamel’s shop and grabbed a credit-card machine to defend himself. The machine dropped to the ground. One person used it to pound the victim, splattering blood against a row of T-shirts. Hamel immediately closed shop.

Just last weekend, two men were stabbed to death in a parking lot next to the Bahia Resort Hotel, about a half mile east of Hamel’s. The killings, which police said involved gang activity, followed by nine months the shooting deaths of a 21-year-old man in the same parking lot and a 17-year-old girl in a nearby Ski Beach parking lot.

“You’ve got a 21-year-old guy and an 18-year-old guy stabbed to death, and a 17-year-old girl and 21-year-old guy shot to death, all in less than a year,” Hamel said. “People are really fed up about this. We’ve got to get control.”

To address the problem of violence at Mission Bay, City Manager Jack McGrory on Tuesday agreed to close the Bonita Cove and Ventura Cove parking lots, beginning Tuesday, from 10 p.m. to 6:30 a.m. And police have assigned 18 more officers to the area, three weeks earlier than normal.

Councilman Ron Roberts wants to close the Crown Point Shores parking lot as well, but that would require City Council and state Coastal Commission approval.

Even with all three lots closed, many on the council openly questioned what good it would do and wondered whether gangs were the real problem.

Police, for example, do not consider the area a haven for gangs.

In last weekend’s stabbings, a gang attacked another group of youths who had no gang affiliation. Less than a day earlier, four people were injured and 11 people arrested at the Crown Point Shores parking lot--three of the people were gang members. The two incidents were not related, Gibson said.

“Based on what we’ve seen, there’s not a gang problem,” said Lt. Dennis Gibson, head of the department’s gang unit. “I think there’s some over-concern regarding gang violence on the increase in the beach area. We have it everywhere, every day in this city.”

Others, like Hamel and other businessmen, say the problem is alcohol. They want drinking, which is permitted on the beach between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., banned entirely.

“Alcohol, alcohol, alcohol, that’s the problem,” said Hamel, who has owned his business selling T-shirts, skateboards, surfing equipment, roller skates and other items for 24 years. “I call the people that hang out around here SCUDS: Southern California Unemployed Dirtbag Scum.”

Lifeguards report an increase in violent incidents, mostly having to do with alcohol.

“On a good sunny day, with 20,000 to 30,000 people along our 2 1/2 miles of beach, we’ve got 8,000 to 10,000 people out on the beach in varying degrees of intoxication,” said Marshall Parks, a lieutenant with the city’s lifeguard services division.

“We are finding that 60% of all our contacts with people on the beach between 18 and 35 have some relation to alcohol,” he said.

People should not be shocked by the numbers, Parks said, noting that the beach should not be any less prone to violence than other areas of the city.

“We have helped out on stabbings, muggings and rapes,” he said. “I held two guys for the police who were arrested for possession of stolen property. The beach down here is an ideal spot for thugs.”

The City Council attempted to tackle the sticky situation when it approved a ban on alcohol at the beach in February.

But the ban ran into heavy opposition, chiefly from a group financed largely by local beer distributors. The group collected nearly 30,000 signatures to put the question of a ban on the ballot.

As a result, council rescinded the ban rather than being forced to put the issue to a vote during a special election, which would have cost $450,000.

The issue of alcohol on the beach, including a proposal by Councilwoman Abbe Wolfsheimer to create “nodes,” or pockets where drinking would be permitted, will be reviewed by the end of the month, City Manager McGrory said.

Meanwhile, Mayor Maureen O’Connor, who says existing laws are sufficient to control public drunkenness, said the real problem lies with the bars in the Mission Beach area.

“I was out there one Friday night and saw people walking out of the Red Onion restaurant who, in my opinion, were much, much too drunk,” she said. “We’ve got problems that are much worse than people drinking on the beach.”