City Preps Residents to Defend Beach Parking Zones

By Jorge Casuso

On the surface, it seemed just another meeting of city staff and their constituents.

But with seven Ocean Park preferential parking zones on the line - all of them more than 10 years old -, Saturday's meeting at the Ken Edwards Center was anything but routine.

Instead of just providing information and listening to concerns, planning department staff helped coach and organize some three dozen residents for a crucial Coastal Commission meeting Tuesday morning.

After a year's delay, the commission finally will decide the fate of 936 preferential parking spaces south of Pico Boulevard and east of Lincoln Boulevard that were created by the city without commission approval between 1983 and 1989. The commission discovered the spaces in 1998, while considering the Edgemar Development project on Main Street.

"Don't be exclusionary," Planning Director Suzanne Frick advised the residents. "What is important is to put a face on this issue. We don't want to alienate this commission."

Among the key points city staff encouraged residents to make are the dearth of street parking, the availability of parking in beach lots and the make up of the community (it is not just rich homeowners).

Residents who spoke at Saturday's meeting said they feared that if preferential parking is revoked they wouldn't be able to move their cars or entertain guests, especially on weekends, because there will often be nowhere to park near their homes.

"I can't leave during the day, but there are empty spaces on the beach," said one resident who lives in a zone near Main Street with no daytime restrictions. "As usual, the residents are going to be caught in the middle of this squabble."

While there are 2,400 spaces in Ocean Park's two beach lots, it costs $7 to park ($6 during the winter.) By comparison, unrestricted street parking is free.

Frick, however, warned against bringing up the underused lot, saying that lowering the rates - which already are cheaper than the rates at Venice Beach and Will Rogers State Park - is not on the table.

She did encourage residents who blamed the parking woes not on beach goers, but on employees and customers of Main Street businesses, to speak out on Tuesday.

"It's a major impact," said Roger Genser, a 22-year resident of Ocean Park who helped organize the first Ocean Park zone in 1983. "It was a reaction against Main Street. It had nothing to do with beach parking."

Tuesday's decision will center on whether Santa Monica's zones restrict access to the beach, which the Coastal Commission was created in 1976 to protect.

Commission staff has recommended that the seven zones be retained - with the caveat that the city must reapply for the permits in three years. The city opposes that condition, saying it would be too costly, inhibit long-range planning and leave residents in limbo. Instead city staff is proposing to conduct a parking monitoring program and file a report within five years.

Commission staff also is requiring the city to create 154 spaces to help replenish those taken up by preferential parking. Of these, 65 already have been created. The city also must keep the Tide and Pier beach shuttles running during the summer months.

While Coastal Commission staff seems sympathetic to the plight of beach area residents, it is impossible to predict what the commission will do, Frick said. One warning sign was a complaint by a commissioner who visited the beach to watch the sunset and found no place to park.

"We've been discussing this with the staff for a year and a half," Frick said. "I think this really boils down to philosophical issues with the commission."

Although the city has been negotiating with commission staff, it also has made it clear that it is prepared to file a lawsuit if the commission revokes the zones.

"We have a difference of legal opinion as to whether the Coastal Commission even has authority," Frick said. "We would prefer to go through the process and have a positive outcome."

Since the Coastal Act was passed in 1976, the Coastal Commission has required cities to apply for permits for the special parking zones.

Historically, the Coastal Commission has granted permission for preferential parking zones in coastal communities, often imposing strict conditions to ensure plenty of public parking and beach access.

Since 1982 the commission has approved three applications from Hermosa Beach, Santa Cruz and Capitola. The commission, however, has denied preferential parking permits for Santa Monica's closest neighbors - Venice to the south and Pacific Palisades to the north.

In 1998 approximately 7.5 million visitors flocked to Santa Monica beaches. Over the past 28 years beach attendance has grown by 20 percent.

City Manager Susan McCarthy, who did not attend the meeting, said it would be "unforgivable" if residents weren't prepared given what's at stake.

"The Coastal Commission has a relatively clear mission laid out in the law, and in this situation, it may not be a mission that is sympathetic," McCarthy said. "This would certainly be a profound change."

The Coastal Commission will meet Tuesday at 10 a.m. at the Four Points Sheraton, 530 Pico Blvd.

Staff writer Teresa Rochester contributed to this report.

South Side Rapist Caught

By Anne La Jeunesse

Dogged detective work has led to a break in one of Santa Monica Police Departments' most perplexing cases -- the identification of the notorious "Southside Rapist," who terrorized the city for nearly three months during a string of vicious rapes, kidnappings and robberies, and who puzzled police for four years.

Israel Hardin, 28, is suspected of kidnapping and brutally raping three women, ages 36, 40 and 82 between October 1995 and January 1996 in the city's south side. Police are investigating the possibility that he raped a fourth victim, as well as others who have not come forward.

The case brought intense media scrutiny, criticism by victims who said they were treated callously by investigators and a trail that went cold despite continual checking of DNA records, pursuing tips, placing wanted posters with the suspect's likeness and keeping a detective on the case even after a special task force was disbanded.

Frustrated police stated many times over the years that the rape suspect was either dead or incarcerated somewhere -- and they were right.

While preparing for the recent trial of a man arrested in March 1999 on suspicion of an attempted kidnapping, robbery and illegal use of a firearm, Detective John Henry noticed similarities in some of the evidence in the recent robbery case and in the unsolved rapes, according to department spokesman, Lt. Gary F. Gallinot.

Henry took his suspicions to Detective Dan Salerno, who remains in charge of the rape cases. Using DNA evidence that had been preserved, they found that the man charged with the failed carjacking was likely the Southside rapist.

"It was a great piece of investigation," Gallinot said. "We had assumed this guy was dead or in prison, and that turned out to be right."

Well, partially right. The suspect, Hardin, has spent most of his adult life incarcerated and, when not in jail or prison, lived with a string of relatives of acquaintances, Gallinot said.

"He never really had a home," Gallinot said.

Hardin, who was convicted of the foiled Santa Monica carjacking attempt was recently convicted and on Friday he was sentenced to 163 years in prison. He has five strikes against him now, Gallinot said.

Also on Friday, Hardin was charged by the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office in a 33-count felony complaint in connection with the 1995 and 1996 rapes. That complaint includes seven counts of robbery, five counts each of kidnapping to commit robbery, kidnapping and forced oral copulation, three counts of forcible sodomy, four counts of rape, two counts of residential burglary and one count each of attempted robbery and false imprisonment. He allegedly used a gun in those crimes.

"This is a very bad guy, he's a real predator and he's never getting out," Gallinot said.

Hardin will be arraigned on the rape charges on Feb. 9.

He was in prison nearly the entire time that Santa Monica police had been searching for him, and tried to escape at least twice, Gallinot said.

Hardin was arrested in Carson on Jan. 26, 1996 -- 13 days after the third Santa Monica rape, on charges of receiving stolen property, Gallinot said. Hardin remained in custody until he was convicted and sentenced for that crime on June 13, 1996, and went to state prison, Gallinot said. Hardin remained their until his parole on March 14, 1999.

Sixteen days later, he was arrested in Santa Monica on March 30, 1999 during the botched carjacking attempt and has been in county jail ever since, Gallinot said.

One courtroom viewer Friday said that Hardin closely resembles a black and white composite drawing created by internationally known police sketch artist Jeanne Boylan, one of many attempts to gain more clues to the suspect's whereabouts.

Karen Pomer, a documentary filmmaker who was one of the rape victims, said Friday that she had been living in New York when she was contacted by police around the New Year's holiday and asked to fly home to view a line-up that would ostensibly include Hardin.

However, Hardin refused to participate, and Pomer went back to New York.

"It's a very strange turn of events," said Pomer on Friday. "I just come back and this happened."

Pomer said that she did not go to court to watch Hardin be charged Friday because she does not want to harm the case if he truly is her attacker.

Hardin's felony convictions go back to 1989 and include assault with a deadly weapon and previous robbery convictions, according to authorities.

One of the Santa Monica cases involved the kidnapping of an elderly couple during an attempted robbery in October 1995. In that case, the husband was locked in the trunk of his car while his 82-year-old wife was raped inside the vehicle, police said.