by Patrick H. Moore
The Vans U.S. Open of Surfing is held each summer in Huntington Park, a largely middle-class Orange County beachside community just north of trendy (and extremely pricy) Newport Beach. This summer the annual event began on Saturday July 20th and concluded on Sunday July 28th. You would think that after nine days of world-class surfing, the crowd would go home tired, a bit sunburned and ultimately satisfied. That’s not what happened, however, in the Orange County city that bills itself as “Surf City USA. Instead the surf fans rioted resulting in eight arrests and a lot of head-scratching. The Associated Press reports:
An unruly crowd surged through a Southern California city’s seaside downtown after the U.S. Open of Surfing, brawling, looting a bicycle shop, clashing with police and trashing property before authorities broke up the melee and made arrests, authorities and witnesses said.
Police from several cities were called in to quell the disturbance Sunday night in Huntington Beach. Several officers and people received minor injuries.
The fun began when a large fight broke out between some malcontents in the crowd soon after the closing festivities. According to police Lt. John Domingo, when the officers on duty tried to break it up, instead of coming to their senses, the mob surged downtown.
The crowd yanked down a stop sign which a man then used to smash the front window of a bicycle shop, which was quickly looted. Other unruly types brawled, whipped bottles around, toppled portable toilets, rocked a city truck and threw a chair into a fountain.
“You see a mob of people running up the street,” said Bert Etheredge, a salesman at the Easyrider bicycle and skateboard shop. “That’s when we decided to shut down the shop and turn off all the lights, lock everything and kind of go into hiding, if you will.”
Then the crowd pulled down the stop sign.
“It was coming through the window two seconds later, and that’s when people started jumping in and pulling the bikes out,” Etheredge told KABC-TV.
To their credit, the police exercised restraint, using nonlethal ammunition rather than real bullets to disperse the crowd.
One witness, Doug Cavender, told KABC-TV that the scene was “really, really nuts, and it got really crazy really fast.”
“I really honestly didn’t think stuff like this happened in the OC.”
Although the arrests were mostly based on fairly minor crimes — disturbing the peace, unlawful assembly and inciting a riot — one person was arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon.
“We’re extremely disappointed and saddened by the disturbance,” said a statement on the U.S. Open of Surfing website. “We work tirelessly with city staff, police, fire and other agencies to ensure a safe environment for all.”
Next year, assuming there is a next year, they’re going to have to work that much harder.