Media Statements and Press Releases

Here's some stories about our successes:

6/24/11
Beach Booze Ban Endures Sands of Time

08/21/09
Police say Alcohol Arrests of Underaged off 30%

Underage Drinking Citations Drop 29 Percent in San Diego

8/13/09
San Diego, A drinking Town with a Beach Problem (PowerPoint | Handout)

January 4, 2008
San Diegans for Safe Beaches
Belmont Park

Tomorrow should have marked the day when the trial ordinance adopted by our City Council to make our beaches alcohol free went into effect. For a short twelve month period, the Council voted to extend the current sensible and successful alcohol free ordinance that has protected all of San Diego’s parks and many of its beaches from alcohol related crime. Under the existing ordinance, neighborhoods that were once plagued by alcohol crimes and alcohol fueled violence have watched as crime rates dropped and families could once again use neighborhood parks.

The twelve month trial ordinance would have demonstrated whether or not alcohol free beach policies in the few remaining beaches in Southern California and across the nation would reduce alcohol related crime, free up public safety resources and promote family friendly tourism in San Diego. The ordinance was not intended, as opponents have claimed, to be a permanent ordinance. The City Council was very clear on that point when they voted to adopt it. It is a temporary trial that has a clear cut off date unless the Council after reviewing the impacts of the ordinance decides that it is in the best interests of San Diego to extend it.

Now that trial period will have to wait. Today, Ban the Ban III submitted signatures to the City Clerk in an attempt to overturn the City Council’s action to protect the public safety of San Diego’s citizens and visitors alike. As a result, until the signatures are declared insufficient or there is a vote of the people, the ordinance and the trial period have been placed on hold.

While we look forward to the citizens of San Diego settling this matter once and for all, we are also disappointed. We are disappointed because the opposition has chosen to force the citizens of San Diego to make this decision based on political rhetoric instead of the facts.

Without the results of the trial period, there can be no informed debate. The opponents have stolen that from the citizens. Only they can answer whether or not they have chosen to prevent that informed debate out of fear that the facts will prove, as they have elsewhere, that alcohol free beaches are good for all San Diegans or because they simply cannot forego, for even one summer, their thirst for beach binge drinking at the expense of the people of San Diego.

Still, even without the results of the trial ordinance for the Council and the people of San Diego to consider, we already know from past experience locally and nationally that alcohol free beaches have a positive impact on surrounding communities. There are literally hundreds of examples of these positive impacts in terms of public safety, economics and tourism that clearly demonstrate the benefits of alcohol free beaches. I challenge the opposition to find a single example of the positive impacts of uncontrolled beach drinking.

Beach communities from across the nation from Fort Lauderdale to Imperial Beach that have adopted alcohol free beach policies have seen rapid and dramatic decreases in crimes and alcohol related arrests. Under the trial ordinance San Diego will see the same decrease in alcohol related crimes.

If the trial ordinance is enacted, lifeguards, some of whom were forced to abandon their towers to deal with the Labor Day riot, will be able to concentrate their attentions on saving swimmers instead of being forced to divert their attentions to out of control drunks on the sand.

It is well documented that alcohol on crowded beaches creates major public safety problems. San Diego Police have made thousands of alcohol related arrests for everything from drunk driving to underage drinking every year at those beaches where out of control drinking is permitted.

Soaring alcohol related crime is why every major urban beach community in Southern California and most other parts of the nation including Florida and Hawaii have already adopted alcohol free beach policies. As a result, the problems we experience in San Diego are concentrated as people from across the nation intent on abusing alcohol at the beach descend onto our beaches, some of the few remaining beaches where uncontrolled drinking is still permitted. The trial ordinance will end this burden.

The recent Labor Day riot, and believe me no matter how the opposition chooses to characterize it, it was an out of control riot, was not an isolated incident. These problems are a constant from Spring Break until well after Labor Day. It’s time we ended the unregulated use of our beaches to binge drink.

The problems associated with out of control drinking at our beaches hardly stop at the edge of the sand. The impacts of uncontrolled drinking at the beach and the strain it places on our already strained public safety resources impact each and every neighborhood in San Diego.

Almost three quarters of the people arrested for drunk driving in our beach communities were on their way out of the beach area into other San Diego neighborhoods when they were stopped. Since the police can only stop a small fraction of drunk drivers, this means that beach drinking endangers the lives of San Diegans in neighborhoods far from the beach.

For far too long our police department has been forced to assign a disproportionate number of officers to patrol the beaches to control unruly drunks. And even with that, another 20,000 police patrol hours were diverted from other neighborhoods to handle alcohol related problems at the beach. The opposition says the answer is more enforcement of existing laws with added police patrols of the beach so they can continue to drink. But that means pulling even more police away from San Diego neighborhoods at a time when the police department is already under-staffed. The reality is that it is high time San Diegans in all of our neighborhoods stopped paying the price of less law enforcement and longer response times to accommodate the unruly drunks at the beach.

Unfortunately the trial ordinance that would have conclusively demonstrated whether or not alcohol free beaches will have the same beneficial impacts in San Diego that have been experienced in countless other communities across our nation will now be put on hold.

We at San Diegans for Safe Beaches ask that once the signatures collected by the opposition have been verified, that the City Council move swiftly to place this matter before the voters on the June ballot. Otherwise, San Diego will have to suffer through another summer of beach alcohol related problems before the facts can be demonstrated to all.

And, we ask the voters of San Diego to join with us to cast their vote in favor of the trial ordinance. Let’s defeat this misguided and premature referendum. Let’s give our beaches and our neighborhoods a chance. Let’s act on the basis of facts, not political rhetoric. Let’s vote for San Diego’s public safety.

Thank you.