![]() ![]() ![]() “We have way less issues now than we did when we kicked them off the beach and sent them to the Boardwalk,” he noted. The relatively new strategy of allowing them to stay on the beach to hang out there instead of causing trouble on the Boardwalk “is working,” Prettyman said. Previously, the police would kick groups of teens off the beach at night. “You may not like looking at them on the beach, but it is certainly more comfortable to look at them on the beach than it is to have them bumping into your baby carriage or listening to their music or foul language or zigzagging through them on the Boardwalk,” Prettyman said. Generally speaking, allowing the teens to congregate on the beach at night rather than having them gather on the Boardwalk is “the lesser of the two evils,” he added. Groups of teenagers hang out on the 11th Street beach at night in August of 2022. “Once I talk to those people and I explain what is happening, they are more appreciative that we are allowing the kids to stay on the beach so they can enjoy the Boardwalk with their family,” he said. However, Prettyman noted that he sometimes hears complaints from people about the “optics” of kids congregating on the beaches. It’s a good indicator that they are being supervised,” he said. “Over the last couple of years, our real serious violations on the Boardwalk area are down. Prettyman pointed out that by keeping the teens out on the beach, they are less likely to disrupt the summertime crowds of families and other visitors on the Boardwalk. “We give them an area and we monitor it.” They are actually in the most-supervised area we have,” he said. Police keep an eye on the crowds of teens while they are hanging out on the beach at night to break up any fights, stop them from drinking alcohol or otherwise getting into trouble, Prettyman said. Ocean City plans to continue with its strategy of keeping large groups of teens out on the beaches at night under police supervision rather than having them spill onto the family-friendly Boardwalk and becoming a nuisance.īroadly sketching out the police department’s plans for the summer, Police Chief Jay Prettyman stressed in an interview Friday that the same basic strategy was successful in 20, so there was really no reason for a dramatic overhaul this year. Not from storms, but from rowdy teenagers. This summer in Ocean City, the beach will serve as a vast buffer to protect the Boardwalk. Ocean City Police Chief Jay Prettyman outlines strategy to keep rowdy teens off the boardwalk this summer. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |