Lessons From a Rowdy Fourth

Southern California’s beach cities are magnets for seekers of surf, sun and fun. But sometimes the crowds are too big, drink too much and turn nasty. Just ask residents of Huntington Beach, who watched their July 4 celebrations the past three years degenerate into fights, fires and massive arrests.

This year, police in Orange County’s self-proclaimed “Surf City” deserve credit for getting things mostly right, and keeping the holiday peaceful. However, if the tales of a few people who claim to have been arrested simply for peacefully drinking beer on their own property turn out to be true, police went overboard in those cases.

Given Huntington Beach’s unfortunate history of violent celebrations on past Independence Days, police aggressiveness has been warranted. Last year hundreds were arrested, and there was some consideration of canceling this year’s traditional holiday parade. Fortunately the parade went forward, with nearly the entire police force on duty. Many of the hundreds of arrests were for possession of alcohol in public. That’s a crime, and the arrests were justified, particularly since revelers in previous years threw rocks and bottles at police and drunken mobs set sofas ablaze in streets. Two years ago, police used fire hoses to disperse crowds; last year they asked downtown businesses to close early to avoid trouble.

This year police sealed off a 100-square-block of downtown to traffic. That helped keep things calm, although police in riot gear still were forced to break up one boisterous group throwing firecrackers.

Officers declined to comment on individual arrests, but surely there must be a line drawn for both sides. If people who claimed to have been taken into custody for possessing alcohol on their own lawns or porches are proved right, that was overzealous police work. Extending a crackdown to law-abiding citizens would discourage any sort of celebration. It’s a fine line, but one that police face every day.

Unfortunately, post-mortems on the Fourth of July have become an all-too-necessary way of life in Huntington Beach, and there are lessons to be learned from this all across Southern California.