Readers React: Memo to the Sheriff’s Department: Public beaches belong to everyone

To the editor: Steve Lopez’s column on California Coastal Commission spokeswoman Noaki Schwartz being asked by private security and L.A. County sheriff’s deputies to leave a public beach shows that nothing has really changed in the many years since I went to Broad Beach in Malibu. (“A new skirmish in the battle for Malibu beach access,” Sept. 5)

Then, too, did sheriff’s deputies come out to arrest me for sitting on a public stretch of beach. The Sheriff’s Department had been essentially working for the homeowners. It promised to make certain it would inform deputies of the law. Apparently that hasn’t happened.

While Noaki may have been allowed to remain, others were not. The average beachgoer is not going to defy a security guard or a deputy. For a local homeowners association representative to say that his group doesn’t chase people off the beach is clearly absurd. That’s precisely what it does and why the guards are there.

It is time that both the Sheriff’s Department and the homeowners learned what the law says. It’s also time for Los Angeles County to step up and open all of its beaches

Sara Wan, Malibu

The writer is a former chairwoman of the California Coastal Commission.

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To the editor: That homeowners in Malibu would hire security guards to drive individuals off public beaches is appalling. But the acts of the sheriff’s deputies in aiding in this enterprise are shocking.

If you don’t know the law, you should not be enforcing it. This is a top-down failure in training, and it makes you wonder how safe we are giving guns to these deputies.

Rex Altman, Los Angeles

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