Doggie Dragnet : Owners Howl Over Crackdown on Dogs Along Venice Beach

Saturday morning beside the Venice Pavilion. Poets and artists and pamphleteers gather. And with them, Rottweilers and schnauzers and retrievers galore.

They symbolically joined hands and paws to claim that most obscure but, for the moment, most urgent of civil rights--the right for a dog to run on the beach and frolic with other dogs, without a leash.

Nearly 100 Venetians and about half as many pets sprawled near the beach in the pavilion’s “graffiti pit” on a dazzling winter morning, in a spirited and sometimes unruly rally against a recent police crackdown on dogs roaming on the beach.

The nascent Friendly, Responsible, Environmentally Evolved Pet Lovers Alliance (FREEPLA, pronounced “free play”) called on Los Angeles police officers, who looked on, to retreat from their aggressive enforcement of city laws that prohibit dogs on the beach and that require dogs to be on leashes. If they don’t, the dog owners said, they will try to change the laws.

“The police are totally overreacting,” declared Daryl Barnett, one of the organizers of the rally. “It’s like a police state.”

Her co-organizer, Mark Konopaske, stated: “It is our right as residents and taxpayers to be able to experience the beautiful sunsets and sunrises at the area’s beaches, while we are exercising our dear, four-legged friends.”

The gathering demonstrated the owners’ resolve to keep their pets on the beach. It also confirmed, once again, the beach town’s reputation as a place where there are as many opinions as there are in-line skaters.

Before the meeting was over, the Friendly pet owners engaged in shouting matches with one man who suggested that their dogs were destroying sea bird habitat and another who sided with the police. Some called angry challenges at several police officers, while others applauded warmly at one officer’s efforts to answer questions.

Regulars along the world renowned Ocean Front Walk and the more southerly stretches of Venice Beach, near Marina del Rey, have

known for years that they can usually get away with walking their dogs on the beach in the early morning or evening. A friendly warning from lifeguards was usually the worst a dog owner would suffer.

But Sgt. Bill Frio, head of the LAPD Pacific Division’s beach detail, said he decided to change all that because of the “hundreds and hundreds” of complaints from citizens and homeowner groups about aggressive dogs and piles of dog feces.

“There is something new in this city called community-based policing,” Frio said in an interview before the rally. “And a lot of the community is asking us to do this. That’s what community-based policing is all about.”

Frio said warnings have been issued for several weeks, until about 10 days ago, when officers began issuing citations for dogs on the beach, dogs off their leashes and for owners failing to clean up dog feces. About 70 citations--with fines of about $70--have been written since then, compared to a handful that would normally be given during a similar period, Frio said.

“When we give out these tickets some people are cheering us,” Frio said. “Or they say, ‘What took you so long!’ ”

The police sergeant acknowledged that many pet owners are well-meaning and clean up after their dogs. “But some don’t, and then you have a toddler crawl away from his mother and put that stuff in their mouth,” Frio said. “And the mothers get upset, believe me they get upset.”

As Frio and his officers attempted to tell the dog owners that they were just enforcing the law, they were challenged by some of the dog owners.

*

“When I call the Police Department and say there are gang members drinking beer out in front of my place, they don’t respond,” said Leigh Wilder, a 28-year-old actress and schnauzer owner, who lives on Ocean Front Walk. “But I’m out with my little dog for a walk and they descend on me!”

Others complained of drug dealers and tourists rampaging through their neighborhoods unchecked while they are being ticketed for merely walking the dog. “Tourists can do whatever they want, but locals obviously can’t!” Julie James, 26, who manages comedians, snapped at one of the officers.

Frio conceded in an interview that officers would probably set priorities other than dog citations. But he said they were only trying to be responsive to other residents.

Some dog owners were not placated, though.

*

Bob Talmage, a bearded, bespectacled choreographer, whose giant black briard lay atop a cement picnic table, said flatly: “They can smile as us all they want, but we are not going to back down!”

In a letter they intend to send to Los Angeles City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter, FREEPLA members described themselves as “tolerant individuals who want to live and work in a community that embraces a spirit of tolerance.”

The letter accuses Galanter of instigating the doggie dragnet and insists that she get the police to back down. Members later pledged to study the rules in other jurisdictions to learn if any allow dogs on the beach.

(In fact, there are two beaches near San Diego’s Mission Bay where dogs are allowed to run free. Huntington Beach in Orange County permits owners to walk their dogs on one stretch of beach, but only on leashes.)

*

In an interview last week, Galanter insisted that she had nothing to do with the dog citations and will have nothing to do with getting the police to back off. She said she would consider proposals to make a stretch of beach open to dogs, saying her own dogs, Seiko and Bob, would love to run on the beach, too.

But Galanter sounded skeptical of reaching a compromise, saying that dog lovers cannot be sure of scooping every bit of their dog’s waste or of preventing fights when their dogs are off the leash.

“Even with responsible owners, sometimes these things happen,” Galanter said.

Until the law is changed, police and lifeguards insisted that they are going to make even the most free-spirited Venetians play by the rules.

“They believe that this is their private playground, and it’s not,” said Los Angeles County lifeguard Lt. Jon Moryl, who grew up in Venice. “This has been a public beach since Abbot Kinney founded it.”