The Hermosa Beach Police Department, prepared for the influx of visitors for the Fourth of July holiday, rallied on 2nd Street around 10 a.m. on Thursday with mounted horseback officers, four-wheel drive vehicles, an L.A. County Sheriff’s Department command post station and even a police bus to hold the overflow of arrestees.
The enforcement that followed mostly had to do with alcohol.
“Most of the arrests we for drunk in public,” HBPD Lt. Tom Thompson said.
From 6 a.m. July 4 to 6 a.m. July 5, the HBPD wrote 114 citations and responded to 367 calls for service, up from 244 last year. The vast majority of the citations were for open containers. “Not that many, but a few were minors,” Thompson said. “The vast majority of the citations were for adults.”
Sick of the rowdy crowds and over the top celebrations on the Fourth of July, the Hermosa Beach City Council in conjunction with the HBPD decided to step up law enforcement presence on the beach and around Hermosa on the July 4th holiday.
“Obviously tickets are up, but that’s partially because of increased enforcement too,” said Thompson. “We were settling things a lot quicker and it was helpful to get out there early set the tone and take action.”
Last year, the HBPD ran out of jail space because of the large amount of drunk in public arrests they made throughout the day. This year the department hired 50 additional L.A County Sheriff’s Deputies to troll the town as well as additional Alcohol Beverage Control and DUI task force officers. All-in-all over 100 officers saturated the 1.4 square-mile town.
29 people were arrested for public intoxication.
“There was also one felony arrest for narcotics and one felony arrest for a robbery,” Thompson said. “The robbery was an ex-boyfriend-girlfriend thing. He punched the ex-girlfriend and stole her phone, and forgot you can do a ‘Find my iPhone’ thing. Officers had him in custody very quickly.”
Thompson said that only a handful of minors were arrested.
“One [minor] ran and was eventually corralled by the horses on the beach,” Thompson said. “He ran west to the beach towards the water line — where are you going to go from there? His father had to come down and get the citation along with his son. Parents need to be mindful of what their kid’s doing. Do you really know what they’re doing on July 4, because you’re going to be citied too.”
Two prisoners were transported to the Manhattan Beach Police Department due to overcrowding on the police bus and in the HBPD jail.
“Anytime you step up enforcement you’re going to have more calls for service,” said Thompson. “We’re going to continue doing it to this level for several years until it gets to the level where the council and city are happy. There’s still a lot of people coming down, thinking and trying to take over the place partying too much.”
Thompson added that the at one point when it was very hectic the police had people lined up near the police checkpoint ready to get transported to the police bus and station. At one point during the day the police had to break up one incident on the beach with a very large unruly crowd.
“We basically lined our people up and shooed them off the beach,” said Thompson. “The rest of the day it stayed really nice.”
In the evening, the police and fire department struggled to respond to illegal fireworks calls, but Thompson said they plan on addressing that issue more in the upcoming year.
“We’re very satisfied with how it came out… We got a lot of great feedback from the citizens who applauded our enforcement, and it showed with the amount of people at the beach not walking around with open containers,” said Thompson. “You could even walk a distance and not see people drinking for once.”
