More Cops

A news report made by thehttp://pacificbeach.wordpress.com/tag/alcohol-labor-day-riot/”> Beach and Bay Press shows that 15 people were arrested by the police from this Labor Day riot. A full two thirds were arrested for being drunk in public. Six of those arrested for being drunk in public were minors. All told seven of fifteen arrested people were minors.

If this is a representative sample of the people that were at the beach during this time it tells me we had a lot of minors down on the beach drinking at the time. This is more evidence that allowing un-obstructed drinking in the beach and park environment, without adequate controls, attracts underage drinkers.

Now there’s a few problems to mention with this scenario. One, is that it is against the law for a minor to be drinking. Two, a person of legal age bought and or supplied the alcohol to the minor. Three, these young men got out of control and started attacking our city police officers. My questions include: should the police be working on determining who supplied the alcohol to these minors?

Also, does this information lead you to believe there could be a lot of minors on the beach drinking?

Finally, I wonder what you think about the statement that we just need more enforcement of existing laws, not new laws, to prevent these minors from drinking. If one looks at a bar you’ll see a bouncer for every 75 or so people. If there’s 10,000 people on the beach i.e. from the Crystal Pier to Pacific Beach Drive that would indicate, if we wanted to have our city enforce alcohol laws like we expect our bars to, that we would need 130 cops just for this area. Doesn’t this seem unreasonable? If it does then why are we demanding the police patrol the same area with six to 20 cops depending on the weekend, and then criticizing them for not doing a better job? Isn’t this a bit of a double standard?

— JERRY HALL