Ocean Surf 34

LOCALISM IN PALOS VERDES

A Bad Indicator

For decades, Palos Verdes surfers have used vandalism, physical violence and intimidation to discourage non locals from surfing the hill. Last Friday at Indicators, Hermosa Beach surfer Tim Banas refused to be intimidated.

Reprinted from Easy Reader, issue of January 10, 2001.
Easy Reader is a weekly, community newspaper serving the South Bay area of Los Angeles.
Story by Kevin Cody, Easy Reader


The hill. Off limits?
Tim Banas was 100 feet from the top of the cliff above Indicators when he became fearful that he wouldn’t make it to the top. Moments earlier he had re-injured his right knee in a fight at the bottom of the 300-foot cliff. The 44-year-old painting contractor had only recently been able to go back to work. A year ago he had re-constructive, ACL surgery on the knee.His front, left tooth was also causing pain. Half of it broke off in the fight. Rolling onto his back, he used his hands and good leg to inch his way up the final distance of the nearly vertical trail. He reached the bluff shortly before dusk and collapsed.

Several Palos Verdes Estates firefighters approached and asked Banas if he wanted to be taken to the hospital. He said he didn’t have insurance and couldn’t afford to go. "They asked where I parked and if I could walk. I said I’d try. One of the firemen picked up my board and another fireman who seemed to be in charge asked me how I got up the hill. I told him I crawled. He promptly told me I wasn’t dirty enough to have crawled," Banas wrote in his journal the following day.

A source at the scene said that a policeman, not a fire fighter, told Banas he looked too clean to have crawled up the hill. Two Palos Verdes Estates police officers approached and began questioning him. Banas said he asked if they were going to arrest the kids who had allegedly assaulted him. He said he pointed out a blond kid and his friend who he claimed threw rocks at Banas and his 19-year-old son Tommy when the two had started down the path to Indicators an hour earlier.



"I told the officers people get beat up here every day and asked why the police don’t do anything about it. One of them said to me, ‘What do you want us to do. Go down there. With your attitude you probably deserved to get beat up.’ I was dumbfounded. I said I thought the job of the police was to offer hope and comfort. He said, ‘You won’t get either from me.’" Banas said he asked the officer’s name. "He puffed himself up and said, ‘It’s on my tag.’" Banas thought the tag said Delaney. (Palos Verdes Estates police do not have an officer Delaney. According to the police report, an officer Delmot was at the scene). The firefighter who was carrying Banas’ surfboard put it down and walked away, Banas said. Banas walked over to several other police officers. He told them their fellow officer had said he deserved to be beat up and asked if that was their consensus, also.

The officer who allegedly made the remark said, "I don’t know what you’re talking about," Banas said.
Another officer told Banas to bring his son to the police station because he was under investigation for assault with a deadly weapon. During the fight Tommy Banas had thrown a rock at the head of one of the local surfers who was fighting his father. Paramedics, fearing his skull might be fractured, had the surfer transported to the hospital.

Banas asked the officers if the people who had allegedly assaulted him were being arrested.
"An officer told me I could make a citizen’s arrest. But if I did I would go to jail," Banas said. The people he made citizen’s arrests against would make a citizen’s arrests against him, the officer explained, Banas said.

"I said I might need help to get to my truck and that I was worried about the attackers still being in the area. They were sitting together, flipping me off when officers weren’t looking. I was denied help and told to walk," Banas said.

Next, he said, he approached a motorcycle officer who was at the curb with another, younger officer. He told them he was worried that if he brought his son to the police station he wouldn’t be treated fairly.
"The younger officer said, ‘There’s your story, there’s their story, and there’s the truth,’" Banas said.
Banas asked for the officers’ cards. The motorcycle officer gave him a card with the department’s phone number and address, but not the officer’s name.

A firefighter who was at the scene said afterwards that Banas was "mouthy and cussing. We tried to help to help him and all he did was bad mouth the guys. He was impossible to work with." Banas acknowledged directing his anger at the firefighters, and said he apologized to them after they told him they were just trying to help him.

Palos Verdes Estate Police Chief Timm Browne, said shortly after the Banas incident, that it was premature for him to comment on Banas’ account of the treatment he received from PVE officers. He said the matter would be investigated.