Beachhead Secure : Policing: The Sheriff’s Department has re-established beach patrols in San Clemente. The city had discontinued them in 1990 because of a lack of funds.

Easing his swaying four-wheel-drive rig onto the sands of this city’s beach, Orange County Sheriff’s Deputy Don Schramm on Thursday kicked off the department’s first beach patrol.

The new patrol comes in response to recent violence in other locations along the Orange County coast, including a rape last month in Laguna Beach and a gang shooting that left one man dead at Newport Pier.

“We wanted to get the presence down there,” said Sgt. Jim Thomas, who is overseeing the patrol. “What happened in Laguna Beach definitely had an impact on our minds. We don’t want to be flirting with danger.”

For the rest of the summer, the deputies will patrol Thursday through Monday from 4 p.m. to 1 a.m. along all of the city’s approximately three miles of beach. Although deputies have done spot-checks before of the county’s beach at Dana Point, this marks the Orange County Sheriff’s Department’s first venture into daily patrols.

“We’ve never had that much beach before,” Lt. Dick Olson said. The department took over law enforcement service in the city in July, after the San Clemente Police Department was disbanded, the victim of budget cuts.

Although the patrols stem from new concerns about safety, San Clemente’s beach has been free of violence so far this year. That’s the way Schramm hopes to keep it.

“The main thing is visibility, to let people know we’re down here,” the 42-year-old deputy said. “What we want to do is nip it in the bud before it starts.”

City police patrolled the beach until 1990, when the department’s three-wheeled beach buggies were put out of service for budgetary reasons. Since then, merchants and city officials say, crime such as vandalism, drunken fights, illegal beach fires and graffiti have increased along the beach.

“The kids are really a mess. This is the worst summer I’ve ever seen,” said Dale Wolfe, owner of a restaurant that fronts the beach. He said teen-agers ripped his redwood planters from the front of his store and vandalized it with graffiti.

“The reason they do all these things is because they can,” he said. “We’re tickled to death to be getting the police back.”

City officials said the new patrol was a benefit of the contract with the Sheriff’s Department. As a result of lower overhead costs and shift reorganization, the city now has 40% more officers on the street than it did when it had its own department.

“Now that we have more people, we can do this without diminishing service to the rest of the community,” City Manager Michael W. Parness said.

On this sleepy Thursday, the patrol indeed seemed a preemptive strike.

As Schramm maneuvered the Chevy Blazer down the beach with tanned city lifeguard Kent Sanders beside him, they scanned the horizon, watching not so much for bad guys as for children who might dart across the beach in front of the vehicle.

Occasionally, they stopped to chat with a beach-goer. At one point, a lifeguard approached and asked Schramm to inspect a small, black stream gurgling up near the edge of a parking lot, its ripe stench indicating an apparent break in a nearby sewer line.

“This job isn’t all glamorous,” Schramm said.

But beach-goer Renee Joseph, 33, of San Clemente said she was glad to see the new patrol because “kids are always wandering off and getting lost.”

Richard La Rochelle, 42, of Downey, who drives here to surf the waves, said he didn’t quite “see a need for (the patrol) here, but I’m all for it. I think it’s a good idea.”

Schramm said he was glad to be there, too. Not that the job was cushy or anything, but Schramm admitted he had a good deal.

For dinner, he thought, “I’ll get something and just park the car, watch the waves and kick back. Hey, it’s part of my job.”

Correspondent Anna Cekola contributed to this story.