At the first meeting of the Belmont Shore Residents Association held since the heated City Council meeting in which Panama Joe’s was granted another temporary entertainment permit, Long Beach City Prosecutor Doug Haubert and Long Beach Police Department Commander Michael Beckman addressed concerns over the neighborhood’s problematic clientele.
On August 8th, BSRA members—together with other other concerned residents and local business owners—were joined by Haubert and Beckman to discuss what is being done on the City’s end regarding code enforcement issues and the continued disorder caused by some of the area’s nightlife patrons.
Two police cars, according to Commander Beckman, have already been diverted from normal duty to serve the needs of the Belmont Shore community by devoting their entire shift to patrolling the tract of Second Street that goes from Livingston Dr. to Bay Shore Ave., making it one of the most policed streets in Long Beach.
Vice agents are also routinely deployed on Second Street in an attempt to identify all code violations both within and outside bars and restaurants.
Despite these amendments as well as the implementation of an identity-sharing system among several bars that identifies repeat perpetrators of public drunkenness, bar fights and vandalism, a report compiled for the month of July showed four occurrences of assault, 13 burglaries, nine acts of vandalism and eight instances of theft in the Belmont Shore area.
One of those in attendance complained of being unable to have cases of repeated vandalism to his property properly addressed by police, in spite of having been able to identify the offenders in at least one occasion.
Haubert was empathic in expressing his concern for the well being of the community, including the prevention of minor infractions such as vandalism, but he stressed that such offenses take second stage to the violent crimes committed every day in Long Beach and on the already overburdened docket of Judges. He stressed that in a city as big as Long Beach, with nearly half a million residents and less than a thousand active duty police officers, human resources must be carefully allotted and prioritized as “the thin blue line is getting thinner and thinner.”
The prosecutor praised the recent imlementation of the identity-sharing system, as most of the offenses in question are committed by the same individuals over and over again. He expressed hopes that a Las Vegas-style information sharing system could be extremely effective in combating the problem on Second Street.