Angry Residents Sink Police Chief’s Surf Cam

Beaches: Images are taken off Web over fear of luring crowds to Palos Verdes.

June 07, 2002|KENNETH R. WEISS | TIMES STAFF WRITER

For three months and 12 days, the video camera panned the waves that peel across one of Palos Verdes’ most popular surf spots, displaying the images over the Internet and beckoning anyone who saw them to visit the beach.

The “surf cam” was the police chief’s idea. He thought that if it were trained on the beach it would help deter fights that had been breaking out between local surfers fiercely protective of their turf and outsiders brazen enough to crash the beach. The camera became a public symbol of the chief’s campaign to end the violence and vandalism associated with the notorious locals and their credo: If you don’t live here, don’t surf here.

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