Ocean City works to rein in unruly teens ‣ Ocean City Sentinel

May 18, 2023

OCEAN CITY — An overwhelming increase in public safety calls during summer's kickoff weekend was a call to action for the leaders of Ocean City.

During a news conference June 1 outside the Music Pier, Mayor Jay Gillian announced several steps the city is taking to crack down on the unruly crowds of youths that have plagued shore communities up and down the coast for the past several seasons.

‘The sheer frequency (of teen problems) that we are seeing over the last three summers, each year it's getting worse and worse and worse.’–Police Chief Jay Prettyman

"Earlier this week, after Memorial Day weekend, we realized it was time we need to address this," he said.

Gillian said City Council voted to move the curfew up two hours to 11 p.m. and prohibit the possession of backpacks on the boardwalk after 8 p.m. Those two measures would take effect following a second vote scheduled for June 8. At the same time, the mayor ordered the beaches closed to the public at 8 p.m. and the bathrooms closed at 10 p.m., both of which took effect immediately.

Police Chief Jay Prettyman said 2023 was the worst year yet in terms of calls for service.

"Over the last three years, Memorial Day weekend has gotten consistently worse," he said, noting the rising number of incidents involving a public safety response coincides with the passage of the state Cannabis Regulatory Enforcement Assistance and Marketplace Modernization Act.

Known as CREAMMA and approved in February 2021, it legalized the adult consumption of cannabis and created a marketplace for purchasing the drug.

It also limited the authority law enforcement officers had to stop, question, search and detain juveniles for potential violations such as underage possession and consumption of alcohol or drugs, a move intended to keep underage infractions from becoming a juvenile record that could harm their prospects in the future.

"It is unbelievable how the pendulum has switched now," Gillian said.

Prettyman detailed the number of incidents that occurred over Memorial Day weekend, comparing them with 2022.

He said last year, the department issued 632 curbside warnings, which he called the lowest-level enforcement police can have with juveniles. "This year we were over 1,100, almost double," he said.

The number of calls for service increased from 869 in 2022 to 999 this year, while the number of shoplifting complaints rose from 60 to 100.

"The sheer frequency that we are seeing over the last three summers, each year it's getting worse and worse and worse," Prettyman said.

The city also saw an increase in the number of fights and eight juveniles who were unconscious due to alcohol that had to be taken to a hospital. There also were weapons offenses involving a BB gun that looked like an authentic handgun, knives, burglary tools and even a shovel that was used during an assault.

After hearing reports of what had transpired Saturday, Prettyman went to the boardwalk Sunday and found "a mob-like mentality," with juveniles surrounding police officers and taunting them.

He said two bathroom attendants were spit on, shoved out of the way and just up and quit.

"The bathrooms were destroyed and have to be repaired," he said. "That was just the boardwalk area and it was spilling out into the streets, and now our residents are having to deal with bottles breaking all night long."

Prettyman said the police department has a "strategic tactical plan" in place to close the beaches at 8 p.m.

"We are going to do the best we absolutely can with the size of the police force we have," he said. "Our resources are going to be strained but we are going to do it to the best of our ability."

He said the OCPD would be redistributing a lot of its staff based on what the needs are and where.

"These kids are going to have to go somewhere else so we are going to structure ourselves so that we are able to position officers throughout town to deal with the juvenile issues that pop up," Prettyman said.

Gillian said he wants to educate the public about the limits of policing imposed by CREAMMA, saying many of the conversations he has had — either in person, on the telephone or via email — indicate people think police can do much more than they are permitted to do.

He said people think "if we see something the police can just go up and grab and do things that we did in the past and that were right."

Gillian said youths must be held accountable for their actions but that it's the adults who bear the responsibility for not educating them how to behave properly

"All of us need to look in the mirror and take responsibility. This isn't a kid thing, this is us. We’re adults, we have gray hair, but we have to promote and we have to educate but we also have to hold accountability," he said. "That's the one thing that we’re not doing."

He said it would take a community-wide effort to solve the problem.

"I want to be positive and I want to solve what we’re dealing with right now, but we all have to do it together," Gillian said. "Young kids are drinking too much and passing out. Our EMTs are all over the place and our police all over the place, picking kids up and trying to get them better. It's wrong and it's our fault, it's all of our fault for letting this happen."

Prettyman agreed, noting is must start at home.

"I talk to parents constantly and I’m getting tired of parents telling me it's their kids’ rite of passage. I’m getting tired of listening to parents say they rented that house because it was prom weekend and they didn't think the kids were going to get in trouble," he said.

The police chief said the OCPD made a policy decision last year that a parent would have to pick up every single youth it came in contact with, noting that's "not their grandmother or their aunt or the person they are here with, we make the parent come."

He shared an anecdote about a man from Connecticut who had to pick up his teen in Ocean City.

"When he got here after four hours in the car, he was an absolute pleasure to deal with," Prettyman said. "He was supportive of our efforts, he held his child accountable for their actions and he left. If we dealt with parents like that on a regular basis, we wouldn't be talking about what we are talking about now."

Prettyman said CREAMMA dictated a specific three-tiered warning system for juveniles who are caught possessing or consuming alcohol.

"I can tell you today, most of the problems we are dealing with on this boardwalk are the result of the underage possession and consumption of alcohol," he said.

Officers are allowed only to issue a verbal warning for a first offense, a verbal warning and information about treatment centers for a second offense and, for the third and subsequent offenses, those two things and a referral to a treatment center.

He said in the past, when police dealt with underage alcohol consumption, they were able to issue ordinance violations and charge violators criminally in some instances.

Prettyman said the biggest fear was losing their driver's license. "That really held a lot of weight with the kids."

The caveat, according to the chief, is that "there is nothing to require the juvenile to participate with the police officer — they don't have to give us their name. How do you even give a juvenile a warning if they don't even have to give you their name?

"We are in a position where we are not allowed to ask for consent to search, so when they take the beer and put it in their backpack, we can't retrieve it and confiscate it. We are not allowed to ask their age if we believe they are under the age of 21 for fear that the police officer might get charged with a third-degree crime for the deprivation of the civil rights of the juvenile. So we have essentially legalized the under-age consumption of alcohol."

Gillian said state Sen. Michael Testa, R-Cape May, Cumberland, Atlantic, has been working in the Legislature on behalf of his constituent towns.

Addressing the crowd, Testa said the shore economy generates billions of dollars in revenue for the state and must be preserved.

"I look down this boardwalk and I see all of these wonderful shops and I see the lifeblood of not only Ocean City but the lifeblood of Cape May County and so many of the shore towns that I have been working with," he said. "We must restore law and order. If we don't have law and order restored in all of our shore towns, on all of our boardwalks, we are going to have pure chaos and we are going to lose the gems that we have, not only here in Cape May County but in all shore communities."

Testa said enough is enough and it's time to put the youths on notice.

"We know what that problem is, now we have to offer the solution. The actions that have been taken by the Ocean City mayor and his council will go a long way to send a message to everyone — not here, not this summer. We are not going to allow chaos, we are not going to allow anarchy and we need to make sure the laws are changed to allow law enforcement to do their jobs, to make sure that people are safe."

By CRAIG D. SCHENCK/Sentinel staff