Ocean City’s curfews and beach closings ‘just displaced’ teen problem to rest of town, police chief says

OCEAN CITY, N.J. — While curfews, beach closings, and backpack bans returned the main part of Ocean City’s Boardwalk to families this year and pleased merchants, police Chief Jay Prettyman said the new regulations sent the unruly teens out over the rest of the Shore town.

“It was a great outcome for the beach and boardwalk,” Prettyman said in an interview Tuesday. “It was not such a great outcome for the rest of town.”

So far this year, there have been 16,336 curbside warnings given to teenagers in Ocean City, Prettyman said, which would appear to be well behind 2022′s total of 43,719. In 2021, there were 13,494 warnings.

But, Prettyman said, “it just means those things aren’t happening on the beach anymore.”

“Instead of being on the beach, they spread out in little groups, onto other beaches, at parks, at Wawa,” he said. “It became much more difficult for us to handle as a police department.”

Ocean City cracked down on bad behavior this summer after a Memorial Day weekend during which police responded to 999 total incidents, including underage drinking, vandalism, assaults, shoplifting, confiscation of a firearm, and others.

As a result, the town closed all beaches at 8 p.m. and prohibited backpacks after 8 p.m. on the beach and boardwalk. Boardwalk restrooms were closed at 10 p.m., and the curfew for juveniles was moved up to 11 p.m. Other Shore towns took similar action.

And although boardwalk merchants seemed pleased with the resulting calmness, Prettyman said the teenagers simply dispersed to other parts of the Shore town.

He said people in other parts of town were confronted this summer with more issues with juveniles than they had in the past, when the teenagers flocked to the central parts of town.

“Criminal mischief, noise complaints, shoplifting, disorderly conduct,” he said. “You name it, it was taking place in other areas. In my opinion, we didn’t solve the problem, we just displaced it to other areas of town.”

In the last two summers, police had basically been corralling teenagers onto an area of the beach around 12th Street, saying new state laws related to cannabis and alcohol prevented them from taking any more enforcement action. There was previously a 10 p.m. closing of the beach.

That strategy “was working,” he said, and kept the teens from overwhelming the boardwalk, but the “crowds just got too big for us to handle.”

“Parents kept dropping their kids off,” he noted.

The earlier beach closing upset others, though, he said, including people who like to fish at night and others just looking for a walk on the beach at dusk.

“Unfortunately it was something we needed to do to address an issue, and it worked,” he said. “The beach and boardwalk were much more enjoyable this year than in years past.”

Merchants gave the new restrictions a big thumbs up.

“No issues to speak of, O.C.’s curfew did the trick,” said Richard Cicconetti, director of operations for Manco & Manco Pizza by e-mail.

Wes Kazmarck, who owns Surf Mall and is head of the Ocean City Boardwalk Merchants, said the new regulations made a dramatic difference. He said shoplifting was maybe two-thirds of what it was last summer, and it seemed that teenagers were no longer expecting to come to the boardwalk to “do whatever they want.”

“It definitely did make a difference,” he said.

He said the rowdy teens had been putting Ocean City’s family friendly identity at risk.

“It was great to see our city and other shore town realize we have to do something,” he said. “I think eliminating the beach parties, the curfew, and backpacks not being allowed really helped.”

In Wildwood, where beaches close at 9 p.m., and the curfew was moved this year from 1 a.m. to midnight, Mayor Pete Byron said there were no big issues this summer with teenagers.

He noted that Wildwood’s large beaches and arguably higher level of tolerance for boisterous visitors and large crowds left the town well-equipped to monitor for any serious escalations.

“Every town has its own unique personality,” Byron said. “What [Ocean City] perceives as large gatherings and issues, no disrespect to them, that’s just a day on the beach in Wildwood. Police know how to handle it.”

In Ocean City, Prettyman said he would recommend continuing this summer’s restrictions, despite the inconvenience of closing the beaches at 8 p.m. and the effect on other parts of town.

“It’s just the price you have to pay,” he said. “If parents are going to let kids out just to wander the streets, we’re going to continue to be overrun with large volumes of juveniles. It’s like water in a plastic bag, you squeeze it in one area and it goes somewhere else.”