Sponsor of Surfing Event Willing to Try Again Despite Riot

The Ocean Pacific Pro Surfing Championships should return to Huntington Beach next year despite the riot that marred the last day of this year’s competition, the event’s sponsor said Tuesday as a special commission launched its inquiry into the disturbance.

About 30 beachgoers and 10 police officers were injured in the Aug. 31 riot, in which a rampaging crowd burned city vehicles and hurled bottles at police. The nine-member commission appointed by the Huntington Beach City Council is investigating the circumstances and will report to the council.

Jerry Crosby, executive vice president of Ocean Pacific Sunwear Ltd., the firm that has sponsored the competition for five years, testified before the commission Tuesday. After the meeting, he said Ocean Pacific has not discussed the possibility of relocating the contest with any other cities because Huntington Beach is the prime site.

“There are other beaches that can stage the event, but they wouldn’t be able to accommodate people as well,” he said. “And Huntington has the most reliable surf.” Crosby added that Huntington Beach also has good access when compared to other beach cities.

The bottom line for the firm is that the contest “has to be affordable,” Crosby said. He said a final decision on whether to continue in Huntington Beach would be made after the commission completes its work.

The commission convened behind closed doors Tuesday, but the meeting was opened to the public 50 minutes later after The Times complained to City Atty. Gail C. Hutton. Councilwoman Ruth Bailey called the initial secrecy “a misunderstanding.”

Another meeting, at which videotapes of the riot made by television and Ocean Pacific cameras will be viewed, is scheduled for Sept. 23. City Administrator Charles W. Thompson said the inquiry may be wrapped up then or a third meeting could be held Sept. 30.

Thompson said there have been very few demands from the public to end the surfing contest. Councilwoman Bailey said she has seen only two letters taking that position. “I think the community is behind it and would support the contest,” she said.

Among the options under consideration are eliminating or separating non-surfing aspects of the event from the surfing itself. Those aspects include a beauty contest and skateboarding demonstration that could either be physically separated from the surf-viewing area or held on different days, Thompson said.

Those events tend to attract people who are not interested in the surfing, he said.

“We had no problems in the stands, and there weren’t any problems up on the pier” on the day of the riot, he said. “The way it appears, there were two different groups on the beach: those who wanted to watch the surfing and those who didn’t.”

Crosby noted, however, that the beauty contest this year was held Friday and Saturday, before the Sunday when the riot occurred. He added that the skateboarders attempted to draw people away from the problem by staging an impromptu exhibition after the fighting started.

“Were it not for the skateboarders, we might have had even more people involved in the disturbance,” he said.

As for the way police handled the event, Crosby declined to comment, saying that he is “not an expert in crowd control.”

But other officials praised police, who came in for some criticism from youths when they charged the crowd with batons in the wake of a melee in which damage estimated at $225,000 was done. According to Huntington Beach Detective Bob Christie, three police cars, one police van, a red lifeguard jeep and a police three-wheeled vehicle were vandalized and torched in front of lifeguard headquarters at Lake Street and Pacific Coast Highway.

Christie said an investigation is continuing that includes attempts to identify riot leaders from videotapes.

20 Officers Tried to Cope

Thompson said that the 20 police officers on duty did all they could and that the relatively small number was not the problem.

“I don’t think the number of officers was the critical thing,” he said. “If we’d had twice the number of officers, it wouldn’t have made any difference. . . . And it would have been very difficult as well as oppressively costly to have 100 or 150 officers out there.”

He explained that careful planning and preventive measures that will be proposed by the commission will make the difference next year.

He said Ocean Pacific officials “want to continue. The one thing they have to have is good surf, and we have some of the best.”

Times staff writer Heidi Evans contributed to this story.