Posted on 04/01/2016 7:48:40 AM PDT by BenLurkin
For decades, a group of territorial surfers in Palos Verdes — the so-called Bay Boys of Lunada Bay — has been operating very much like a street gang, authorities and locals say. They are accused of staking out turf on a public beach and in the waves, and intimidating and assaulting people who dare to try to access that turf. Tires have been reported slashed, rocks hurled at visitors, death threats leveled. Pretty nasty stuff.
The Bay Boys even have a sort-of clubhouse, an unpermitted structure built on the beach where gang members can hang out and survey the domain they maintain though fear and force.
Localism is nothing new to California's coast, particularly as it has become heavily developed and locals feel an entitlement to the choicest surf spots. I can recall tales of violent clashes among surfers in my hometown of San Diego going back for decades. There are only so many waves at each break, but the Lunada Bay Boys have taken the localism to an apparently criminal extreme.
Maybe that's because it has been allowed to go on for so long, with only perfunctory attempts by local law enforcement to crack down on reported crimes. It might still be ignored were not for videos posted by the Guardian last year of the Bay Boys intimidating a visitor and a police dispatcher essentially dismissing the thugs and the situation as "it is what it is."
...
Now, a class-action suit has been filed by El Segundo police officer and surfer Cory Spencer and others tired of the lack of enforcement seeking a restriction on the Bay Boys from congregating with each other. In other words, a gang injunction.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
ping
They’re lucky someone hasn’t capped one of them yet.
April first again?
I grew up with a lot of this. It was allowed when the wealthy parents of the “bad boys” knew and donated to the local law enforcement.
You Tube has vids of these or someone like them beating guys who dare to get on their sand and water. Throw them out.
“Tires have been reported slashed, rocks hurled at visitors, death threats leveled. Pretty nasty stuff.”
I am not arguing against or for the potential injunction discussed here, but will point out that actual gangs murder, rape, beat, rob and deal drugs.
About time. Gangs of thugs have been allowed to create “no-go” zones out of public areas for far too long - it happens with street thugs in high-crime areas, Muslim “refugees” in Europe are carving out their own enclaves where police dare not tread, and these cretins are doing it on prime public beaches. It’s far past time that authorities in Western democracies started asserting the rights of the taxpayers who actually own these spaces.
Don Henley ping.
Mathew McConahey ping!
The difference between this and the gang territories in the other parts of the city is that people actually want to go the beach.
Very hard to legally carry in those parts of California.
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