Brea Center Barely Moved by Streakers Passing By

The sight of naked people sprinting by doesn’t faze Ray Carter. He says it happens regularly at Brea’s Gateway Center, where he works at Starbucks.

“They come out probably once a month,” said Carter, 21, a business major at Cal State Fullerton.

Other center employees and local police officers confirm the sightings and say the phenomenon appears to be a school prank or initiation rite, perhaps for a fraternity. Typically, they say, a car parks at Brea Boulevard and Imperial Highway, and a bare-skinned young man or woman jumps out, sprints around the fountain by Starbucks and hops into another car waiting in the parking lot.

“Sometimes the girls don’t say anything, they just run by topless,” Carter said. “The guys go all out and start screaming. This one guy did it twice. He got raves when he ran through, so he came back.”

Patrick Kitts, another Starbucks employee, said the coffee shop views the streaking as a joke. “Generally, most of our customers are high school or college age,” he said. “Most of the people just snicker or laugh.”

Brea Police Officer Denise Weiland, who patrols the marketplace on her bicycle, said she pursued a streaker a couple of weeks ago but failed to make a collar.

“We just rode through, and people said, ‘You just missed the streaker,’ ” she said. She pedaled hard and caught up with a car she suspected of harboring the prankster, but she could not identify the person. All occupants of the vehicle were fully clothed, she said, though the culprit may have been the one clad in only a T-shirt and shorts on a chilly night when everybody else had a jacket.

Streaking generally goes unreported, Weiland said, although it is illegal.

“It’s a misdemeanor, so if it’s committed in our presence we have to arrest them,” she said. “If it’s not done in our presence, someone has to be offended for us to make an arrest.”

Specifically, streaking violates laws against indecent exposure, Weiland said. If convicted, the person could be saddled with a fine, community service or even jail time.

For now, however, police have no plans for a crackdown.