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By Elaine Gray - Staff Writer
Because there was no rioting or large-scale violence, it might be tempting to summarize Halloween 1999 with the cliché "A good time was had by all."
But on the morning after, Chico police said that wouldn't be an accurate assessment.
"I want to be cautious about saying, ŒYeah, this was fun, it was a good time.' I want to avoid that because that was not really the case. There was a lot of violence out there and a lot of alcohol abuse," Lt. Mike Weber said.
Overall, police were thankful for a downtown glass ban and a porch couch round-up. But they couldn't stop individual acts of violence and the weekly overindulgence in alcohol that peaked over the Halloween weekend.
At about 11:30 p.m. Sunday at Third and Main streets a 20-year-old Red Bluff man suffered a severe stab wound to the neck in what police described as a gang-motivated attack.
"By all indications the victim and his friends were just out enjoying the Halloween festivities," said Detective Jose Lara. "He was attacked specifically for not belonging to the (same) group as the assailant."
The alleged attacker, Leonel Puga, 20, of Hamilton City, is a documented gang member in Butte and Glenn counties, Lara said. Puga is in Butte County Jail on a count of attempted murder.
Puga and his buddies outnumbered the victim's group by two to one, Lara said. Puga's group reportedly attacked, yelling "Norte! Norte!" The victim suffered a 4-inch slash to the neck and was rushed to Enloe Medical Center; he is expected to make a full recovery.
Enloe spokeswoman Linda Tucker said Sunday was the busiest day in the history of the hospital's emergency room. There were 140 patients at the emergency room Sunday - 31 of them for alcohol-related problems.
"A staff member said at one point five people were lined up in beds, all vomiting," Tucker said.
Lt. Weber said Sunday's crowd was the largest police have seen on Halloween. "We estimated the crowd at 20,000-25,000 people on Sunday night."
Halloween-related partying began in earnest Friday and kept police busy through the weekend. A total of 135 arrests were made during the evening hours of those three days, more than half for being drunk in public.
"There was significant alcohol abuse," Weber said.
A review of arrest records shows the overwhelming majority of those taken into custody were men in their 20s. Though many were from out of town, the majority are Chico residents. Staff at Butte County Jail were reportedly swamped with processing booking sheets from the weekend.
An E-R reporter who worked Sunday night kept a sample of some of the calls officers responded to during one 30-minute period relatively early in the evening:
9:30 p.m. report of an unconscious 22-year-old who drank excessively; 9:47 p.m. minors in possession of alcohol at Fifth and Broadway; 9:50 p.m. vehicle rollover Highway 32 and West Fifth Street; 9:50 p.m. alcohol overdose Fourth and Normal streets; 9:55 p.m. drunk in public Sixth and Ivy streets; 10 p.m. alcohol overdose Fourth and Normal streets.
"A couple fires were set and one of them was a couch," Weber said. "That was one of the reasons we did the couch patrol - that was heads-up thinking, trying to be proactive - but this was one couch that got away."
The bottle ban enacted by the City Council turned out to be a huge help over the weekend, he said.
"The no-glass ordinance was a big help," Weber said. "On behalf of the police department we really appreciated the City Council getting that done. We didn't get the flying glass at us that we did last year, though by the end of the evening we all were wearing helmets as a safety precaution."
While no police officers were injured, one citizen was hit in the head by a thrown bottle and had to be taken to the hospital, Weber said.
"Generally speaking the evening went well for us in that we didn't have any significant crowd confrontations," he said. "There wasn't near the level of violence this year that we saw last year."
Weber worried that the community has grown so tolerant of outrageous alcohol-fueled behavior that Halloween might be judged successful just because a major riot was avoided.
"The numbers (of arrests and injuries) are way too large," he said. "We are still a very long way from where we need to be. We really need to go back to the drawing board and find out how to address the situation, because we are not seeing a decrease. We are seeing it grow."
Because of the huge numbers of people involved, Halloween is the peak of party season, but it's far from being the only time police have to deal with out-of-control partying, he said.
"That kind of activity is going on routinely on the west side, not to the magnitude of Halloween, but that same violent behavior mixed with alcohol - the bottle-throwing at police, the fighting - is a continuing problem on the west side," he said. "We have to continually focus large amounts of resources there because of party problems. What that does is actually compromise overall community safety.
"Instead of those officers being out in other neighborhoods and business areas, we have to focus our attention on that area, and that's something we shouldn't forget as we try to figure out what we do in the future."
Staff writers Larry Mitchell and Heather Hacking contributed to this report.