The Frustrating Road to Peace in Huntington Beach

Last year, a municipal court judge ruled that a Huntington Beach ordinance that allowed police to arrest people for drinking alcohol on their front porches or lawns was unconstitutional. Faced with a history of disturbances during the annual Independence Day festivals, and seeking to foster community support to contain damage, the City Council came up with a redraft that is well-intentioned but still flawed. The council should regroup, as it seemed inclined to do at the end of last week, and take the time to get the proposal right.

Judge Caryl Lee reasoned in the case of four men arrested on the Fourth for having open containers of beer on private property that the city ordinance was so vague that people could not be expected to understand it. As a result, an arrest for something that could not be understood was deemed to violate due process.

Huntington Beach, in the perennial search for an ordinance it can live with, has bent over backward to be specific this time. But in the details lie further confusion. This seems to have given the city pause before going forward with the proposed ordinance this week, and it should.

In its most recent draft, the city made it crystal clear what it found acceptable. Unfortunately, clarity does not equate with common sense. Under the amended ordinance, it still would be illegal to drink in most public places. So far so good.

However, it would be unacceptable to drink on your front lawn unless you have a fence. At the same time, it would be all right to drink on a raised porch, but not a level patio in an unfenced yard. The ordinance further would allow drinking on balconies but not in open garages.

You get the idea that there was a containment strategy at work here. The notion seemed to be that if you somehow are raised up or otherwise duly fenced, you are out of range to pose a nuisance to the public.

Surely the building industry, mindful that it is building with such an ordinance in place, could have had some creative fun with these distinctions. To keep a client from becoming a public imbiber, it might be charged with constructing something that gives the appearance of being raised or enclosed. The police, in turn, appear to be in line to become architectural review board field representatives.

Restricting people from access to having a beer on their own property is inherently problematic. As Councilman Tom Harmon noted, the ordinance makes it illegal to be “just mowing the yard on any given day of the year and drinking beer.”

City staff went back to the drawing board and now is proposing a similar ordinance but restricted to the downtown area and, as an experiment, limited to the Fourth of July weekend. That would be an improvement, but we still question a philosophy that seems to intrude so on privacy and personal property.

The beach cities do face the constant dilemma of being attractions for seekers of surf, fun and sun. Once they have arrived, things can get nasty over a long, hot day of celebration after the drinking starts. Police efforts to ensure that holidays are enjoyable for all are welcome and should be encouraged.

Moreover, community policing efforts from throughout the nation give credence to the notion that enforcement of small violations can deter escalating problems. All these things argue for police vigilance. However, it is worth remembering that after fine-tuning, many things went right last year with the police effort.

Authorities must know by now from experience on the big holidays that they have more to do than be design critics. There often are real offenses awaiting prosecution. Coming up with something better would let law-abiding citizen enjoy their own castles, and keep police focusing on the big picture.