Police: Midweek Fourth Less Noisy

Perhaps because the Fourth of July fell on a Tuesday, it was quieter than most others in recent years, Orange County law enforcement officials said Wednesday.

Police were kept busy and arrests were numerous throughout the county, but no major incidents were reported. The biggest problems, said officials for county police departments, were public intoxication and illegal use of fireworks.

In Newport Beach, a contingent of 152 police officers, 42 California Highway Patrol officers and eight sheriff’s deputies made 156 arrests Tuesday, down from 184 in 1999. Sgt. Mike McDermott noted that fewer arrests were made this year, but those that did occur happened in a more concentrated period from noon Tuesday to 1 a.m. Wednesday.

“As compared to last year, it was busier,” McDermott said. “We squeezed a lot of arrests into a 13-hour time period.”

The weekend overall, McDermott said, was a little bit slower than last year, something he attributed to interruption of the holiday weekend by a workday Monday. Two nonfatal stabbings were reported in Newport Beach, and in one, a woman was arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon and taken to jail, McDermott said. The suspect in the second incident was still at large Wednesday.

For the past five years, Huntington Beach has been a fairly quiet place to celebrate Independence Day. In a 24-hour period, 32 arrests were made, mostly for public intoxication and drinking in public, said Police Lt. Chuck Thomas. That number, he said, is significantly lower than the 549 arrests in 1996, the last year in which such a high number of arrests was reported. In 1999, 61 arrests were made, and in 1998, 106 party-goers were rounded up by police and sent to jail, he said.

“The weekend preceding this Fourth of July was busier than the Fourth of July itself, but that’s not unusual,” Thomas said. “It was a normal summer weekend.”

Thomas did not have the number of arrests made over the weekend.

Officials reported that a private fireworks display at a lake in Rancho Santa Margarita went awry when fireworks blew up hours too early, leaving billowing clouds of smoke and frantic residents calling 911.

“It just went boom,” said Sgt. John Brimmage of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department. “They all went up at once.”

Before children attending the private function became too upset, the event’s promoters got some replacement fireworks and went on with the show. There were no injuries or property damage reports, Brimmage said.

Some cities kept tabs on how many illegal fireworks calls they received. The Westminster Police Department reported 58 and Buena Park, which allows certain fireworks, reported 101 calls.

It was also a busy holiday for Placentia, where police said the typical night log went from two pages to six, mainly because of reports of illegal fireworks, Lt. Dave Taylor said. That department’s only arrest for the night was a woman picked up on suspicion of being drunk in public.

Anaheim police spokesman Rick Martinez said there were no major incidents over the holiday weekend, and it was slower than the year before.

“It could probably be attributed to this Fourth of July falling on a Tuesday,” he said. “There was sort of that Monday break that may have been a reason for the decrease in problems.”

Cleanup crews early Wednesday were pleasantly surprised to find not as much trash as they might have found on a weekend Fourth of July. David Niederhaus, general services director for Newport Beach, said the cleanup began over the weekend in several phases.

Although the trash hasn’t been weighed yet, it is believed to be about 15 to 20 tons. The 40 city employees spent the day picking up about 300 large trash cans from the beach and 800 regular trash containers on public streets.

“In most cases, you couldn’t see the cans because of the debris overflowing so badly,” Niederhaus said. “But it’s a little lower this year because we’re in the middle of the week.”