The Palos Verdes Estates Police Department, accused in a class-action lawsuit of protecting a band of territorial surfers, recorded more than a dozen incidents of surf-related localism since January 2015, none of which resulted in arrests, according to a review of public records.

About 14 reports detail physical violence as well as several threats and a vandalized car.

• VIDEO: Two punches are thrown during this October 2015 incident

The troublemakers hassled others at several locations along the coast but primarily in Lunada Bay, including two incidents at the center of the lawsuit accusing the Bay Boys of ruling the crescent-shaped cove as a street gang. Alleged members of the Bay Boys who have been reached for comment strongly deny the allegations.

The lead plaintiffs, El Segundo police Officer Cory Spencer and Malibu photographer Diana Milena Reed, both claim to have been assaulted by Bay Boys earlier this year, and that the city and Police Chief Jeff Kepley protected them.

Many of the police reports state they are for documentation purposes only for a variety of reasons, including that victims did not come forward or because those accused of bullying insisted on a different version of events. And because they didn’t rise to the level of crime reports, many weren’t included in the weekly crime report sent to the local media, including a battery in Lunada Bay on Oct. 10.

In that incident, a woman and her family were driving on Paseo del Mar near Palos Verdes High School when she witnessed a bald man tell another man to leave and then punched him several times in the face when he refused. Four other men, 30 to 40 years old, stood behind the bald man near the cliff’s edge. She video recorded the end of the altercation, capturing the bald man’s final two punches to the surfer in his 50s.

The incident ended seconds later when the man who was punched picked up his yellow surfboard and walked away. The woman did not see the victim instigate or retaliate at any time, the report said.

She said she could identify the man who threw the punches if she saw him again, and after the incident he was hanging out near a black Chevrolet monster truck with oversized tires that “really stood out,” the report said.

Police noted that the video provided a limited perspective of the men because of the distance from Paseo del Mar to the cliffs. The report also said the victim did not report the incident, and the identity of the attacker also was unknown.

“In the event the victim comes forward or is identified, this report should be reclassified as a crime report … and forwarded to the L.A. County District Attorney’s Office for consideration of filing charges against the suspect, should they be identified as well,” the report said.

Investigations stall

For years, police have said more surfing localism incidents occur than are reported. The police reports indicate that threats are common, but vandalism and violence also have occurred.

In July, a man told police that another surfer threatened him with a raised fist in the water before swimming away off Paseo del Mar and later stole his sandals from the shoreline. Officers arrived, and the surfer accused of bullying told them a different story. An hour later, the man who called the police called back to report a dent from a muddy footprint in his blue Volkswagen on Paseo del Mar.

The police report noted that the accused surfer was no longer in the area when officers responded to the scene the second time, and was unavailable to be contacted via his cellphone.

In another report, an intoxicated woman in her 30s chased away four friends who had hiked down to walk on the beach in Lunada Bay at 9 p.m. Dec. 6. She told them they didn’t belong and needed to leave unless they knew someone or gave her alcohol.

Kepley, who added extra patrols during the high winter swells, has said it’s been “years” since an arrest was made for surfing localism, which is not unique to the Peninsula. The last arrest in Palos Verdes Estates appears to have been made in 2004, according to records.

On Jan. 29, Reed and Jordan Wright tried to surf at Lunada Bay when a middle-age man screamed at them along the beach. Police officers, stationed at the top of the bluffs, witnessed the incident and noted in the report that the man was visibly angry and hostile and yelled so loudly officers heard him over the crashing waves 717 feet away, as measured by a range finder.

Officers hiked down the trail to keep the peace and interviewed both Reed and Wright and the man who yelled at them at the Lunada Bay Patio, with both sides giving different versions of the incident, the report said. Officers gave Reed and Wright the opportunity to make a citizen’s arrest, which is typically made to detain a suspect until authorities arrive, the lawsuit noted. They declined to make the citizen’s arrest and instead chose to file a report.

Wright gave police a removable digital flash disk from his GoPro camera he said contains footage of the incident, but police were unable to view it because of technical difficulties, the report said. The report said the case and disk were forwarded to the detective division, but city officials will not comment on anything related to the lawsuit.

Wright, who told the Daily Breeze that police returned his disk, said he did not know to what extent officers viewed it. He said the footage was not very good quality and he did not respond to a request to provide the Breeze with a copy.

Arrest not first option

After Reed was sprayed in the face with a shaken can of beer on Feb. 13, police initially investigated the incident and identified Brant Blakeman as the Bay Boy who video-recorded the incident, according to the complaint. However, Kepley, in a subsequent meeting with Reed and her attorney, refused to allow Reed to see Police Department photos of the Bay Boys that would have allowed her to identify her assailants, the complaint said.

Nearly a year after Kepley became chief in June 2014, The Guardian newspaper posted what has turned out to be explosive hidden camera footage of an officer in the Police Department lobby saying, “We know all of them,” and the Lunada Bay atmosphere as, “It is what it is.”

After that, Kepley appeared in multiple media outlets making strong statements saying he is eager to make an arrest for surfing localism. But in February during the winter surf season, Kepley clarified those statements to the local media, saying he preferred to communicate with the surfers before considering making an arrest.

“I’m trying to work with the surfers collaboratively and express the importance of acting properly, taking the right approach with out-of-town surfers and not crossing the line,” Kepley said in February, adding that “if an arrest is best solution to that problem, then we will make that arrest.”

Kepley said threatening arrests in Lunada Bay “would be inflammatory to the surfers and cause a rift between us, and I can’t have that right now.”

Many of the officers in the department have been policing Palos Verdes Estates for more than 20 years and know many of the surfers, Kepley said, adding that establishing relationships wherever possible is effective policing.

“Where it can be unhealthy is if it’s a buddy relationship and muddies the water and makes it more difficult for the officer to do his job impartially,” Kepley said. “I’m not hearing or seeing anything of that.”

Kepley said some surfers who hang out in Lunada Bay are from Palos Verdes Estates, and some are not. He said he has been told about 200 belong to “this big group down there.”

“There’s different sets,” Kepley said. “There’s the core, then there’s the satellite groups. And they all know each other. Some are local, some are not so local — Redondo Beach, Manhattan Beach and other areas.”

The number of territorial surfers in Lunada Bay has fluctuated through the decades, according to published estimates. Slade Fester, in a 1992 edition of Surfing Magazine, was 29 years old and estimated that about 100 locals surf Lunada Bay.

In a June 1996 Coastal Nostra magazine article, a senior Bay Boy estimated about 50 surfers belong to the clique. Vigilance against outsiders “is up to all of us” but younger surfers do the actual “hassling” of intruders, the senior Bay Boy told reporter Michael Goodman.

Staff writer Megan Barnes contributed to this report.