Palos Verdes Surf Bullies Crackdown: Police Chief Jeff Kepley To Lunada ‘Bay Boys,’ ‘We Will Make An Example’

“Everybody knows to stay away from Lunada Bay because they’ll get hassled,” Palos Verdes local Peter McCullom was quoted in May 1995 by the Los Angeles Times.

At the time, it was reported that the “Bay Boys” member lived off of an inheritance, giving him time to travel and surf. McCullom faced criminal charges with regard to his involvement in a “confrontation” with “outsiders” who arrived to surf the notorious Lunada Bay.

Fast forward to December 2014, and it appeared that very little had changed. Sef Krell visited Palos Verdes’ Lunada Bay to surf a newly arrived north swell, marking the beginning of the winter season, when Lunada gets the big waves it is notorious for. As Krell made his way down the rocky terrain to the surf, he was “pummeled by dirt clods” from cliffs above by a group of men who “told him to go home,” according to the Los Angeles Times.

Now, new hidden camera footage shows purported locals at Lunada Bay reading visiting surfers the riot act, explaining how things work at the Palos Verdes surf break.

“People will just f******g duke it out. F******g work your car and get in fights,” a seeming local or member of the Lunada “Bay Boys” can be heard stating in the NSFW footage captured by the Guardian.

“We will make an example out of anyone who behaves criminally down there,” Palos Verdes’ newest police chief, Jeff Kepley was quoted. “I’m not so naive to believe that we can solve this instantly or overnight. It took 50 years to get here. Hopefully, it won’t take that long to resolve, but I think it’s very important to get the word out as aggressively and enthusiastically as we can that the status quo is going to be mixed up around here.”

Kepley said that patrols are being added to the coast in Palos Verdes and that police officers have been working overtime. The chief indicated a hope that the first arrests at Lunada Bay “in years” would be made.

Back on the beach at Lunada Bay, Krell decided that he wasn’t going to let the seeming Bay Boys intimidate him and went surfing anyways. Before he paddled away from the shore, he left a bag with his things in it. Once he was out in the lineup, the men dumped his belongings in the ocean and began throwing rocks at him.

Krell, who works as a attorney, thinks that the police need to time their patrols with ocean swells, when activity is likely to be highest, and put “plainclothes officers” on the cliff overlooking the surf break, ready to take names, phone numbers, and suspect descriptions, like “any other police departments do.”

Things reached such a fever pitch in 1995 that protests were organized and a $6 million-lawsuit was filed against the City of Palos Verdes by a group of surfers who had been victimized by the “Bay Boys” from Torrance, California

Lunada Bay Boys Just Got Pulled Over https://t.co/JWuRza5Nmy

— The_Wuss (@The_Wuss) December 31, 2015

Jordan River, a right-breaking rivermouth near Sooke, British Columbia, among many other locations on the west coast of North America, is known for localism, with incidents of assault and vandalism reported on a fairly regular basis, according to Coastal BC.

Canadian pro surfer Nico Manos was quoted as saying that some “localism” exists at “footpath-access” surf spots in Nova Scotia by Outdoors, though reports of vandalism and assault at Nova Scotian surf breaks are elusive.

Californian Geoff Hagins, who has been active in the fight to make the surf at Lunada Bay free for everyone since the 1990s, describes the “Bay Boys” as being “sinister.” Two years after protests were orchestrated at the break in 1995, news crews were reportedly ordered out of the area. Then, in early 2015, a police dispatcher was caught on camera saying “We know all of them. They are infamous around here.”

The modern sport of surfing can be traced directly to Hawaiian Duke Kahanamoku. Surfing had “all but vanished” in Hawaii at the time of the Duke’s birth in 1890. Besides being a gold medal-winner and multi-time Olympian, Kahanamoku effectively single-handedly invented the sport, according the Encyclopaedia of Surfing. Duke Kahanamoku is affectionately known as the “father of modern surfing.”

The greatest shortcoming of the sport of surfing has been described as its failure to live up to the lofty ideals set down by Kahanamoku and later Tom Blake. The “Bay Boys” and all modern surfers would seem to owe Kahanamoku and Blake, as reported by Surfer, a great deal. The modern surfboards that the 30-year Lunada Bay locals use would not exist but for the enthusiasm and willingness to share of Kahanamoku and Blake.

Eleven-time world champion Kelly Slater has recently unveiled his “perfect” artificial wave, which is seen as having the potential to make surfing more accessible to those who live inland, away from the ocean, as reported by the Inquisitr. Ten years of research was reported to have been devoted to creating Kelly Slater’s wave. Artificial waves are seen as having the ability to take crowding pressure away from spots like Lunada Bay, as well as making the sport an option for a much larger group of participants.

[Photo by Keystone/Getty Images]