Assemblymen McClellan, Simonsen hope to give enforcement power back to police
OCEAN CITY — The First Legislative District’s assemblymen — Ocean City’s Antwan McClellan and Lower Township’s Erik Simonsen — said a prime focus in the upcoming year would be bringing some common sense to police enforcement of unruly teens.
McClellan and Simonsen, during a break in the action of a recent basketball tournament where they were watching their hometown teams — the Ocean City Red Raiders and Lower Cape May Regional High School’s Caper Tigers — pull out victories early in the season, talked about an issue that became pressing over the past two summers and on a few other issues.
After saying he wants to ensure everyone has a happy and healthy 2023, McClellan noted he is looking for legislative solutions to the problems police departments are having with teenagers during the summer. He wants solutions that help police and parents and protect the public.
“That’s a big problem with what’s going on on our beaches during the summer,” McClellan said, referencing issues shore towns up and down the South Jersey coast have faced with large gatherings of teenagers.
The root is changes to laws governing juvenile enforcement that took effect when the state legalized recreational marijuana use.
Police departments have found their hands tied when dealing with teenagers suspected of drinking alcohol, using marijuana and other delinquent behavior.
The new laws also prevent police from searching teens for contraband and even asking for their names or reporting their behavior to their parents.
In November, Sea Isle City Mayor Leonard Desiderio, a member of the Cape May County Board of Commissioners, organized a work session with other mayors, police chiefs and prosecutors to try to find solutions to prevent problems exacerbated during the summer in shore towns.
The focus is laws that make it illegal for police to detain or search unruly juveniles suspected of certain illegal behavior, allowing a lawless environment among groups of young people.
The local officials also want to address illegal gatherings such as the one that happened among car enthusiasts in September that saw dangerous events on streets in Wildwood and other communities and ended in the deaths of two people in Wildwood.
The officials, who included McClellan and Assemblywoman Claire Swift of Atlantic County, plan to meet again Jan. 18.
“We’re working with our friends and colleagues from Legislative District Two to give the police more power and also be able to report back to parents,” McClellan said of Swift, Assemblyman Don Guardian and state Sen. Vince Polistina.
“The parents need to know what their kids are doing and I think they want to know. There were good intentions (with the laws) but parents need to know what’s going on and help to rectify (problems.) We also want to deal with the problem they had in Wildwood, so we have a bill coming forward with that. It’s called a special events bill to help the police and allow them to take care of that before it gets worst,” McClellan said.
“Antwan and I work on things together,” Simonsen said. That includes “uncuffing the police …. There have been a lot of laws passed to handcuff them. When they can’t communicate with parents, we’re going to have problems. That’s just the way it is. Parents aren’t notified when their kids get in trouble.”
“Instead of being proactive, they’re being reactive. Instead of thinking it out, when they passed the marijuana law and legalized it — which was fine, because that’s what the people voted for — Antwan and I and the rest of the Assembly have been trying to clean that up. There was nothing in place before they passed it. There wasn’t thought put into it.
“It was a spur of the moment reaction — let’s take the power away from the police,” he said.
“There’s a joke in the Statehouse — you get caught with a bag of weed and you get in trouble for having a plastic bag,” Simonsen said with a laugh, referencing the state’s ban. “I have to give Sen. (Jon) Bramnick that. He’s a standup comedian.”
“Giving the police back the power they had in the first place to do their jobs, which in turn keeps them safer as well,” he said. “Especially in Legislative District One, we’re unique down here. We have issues that the legislators up north don’t deal with, and vice versa.”
Although they’re in the minority in the New Jersey Legislature, the two Republicans believe they can work across the aisle to get things accomplished.
“The good thing is my adult job, as I like to say, is working for the Cape May County Sheriff’s Office,” McClellan said. “I’ve been able to attend a lot of state Sheriffs Association meetings and talk to a lot of chiefs of police and also deal with some of the legislators who are in tune with what’s going on around here.
“We work in a bipartisan fashion across the aisle and talk about the issues we have here in the real South Jersey,” he added.
That helps when they go up into North Jersey with the shore towns there.
“There is a lot of common ground and we’re able to talk to our friends across the aisle,” he said.
“The one thing Assemblyman McClellan and I do is form relationships,” Simonsen said. “We communicate with people. We’re moderate. People know that. We build relationships with people across the aisle. We have go-to assemblymen and -women who know us because we’ve been in office for three years, going on four. They figured out what we’re about and we know what they’re about.
“There are some sensible people on the other side of the aisle,” Simonsen said. “You just have to find out who they are. I think we figured that out by now and I think they feel the same way on the other side of the aisle.
“Assemblyman McClellan has a lot of friends on the other side of the aisle and so do I. It’s about forming relationships. Otherwise, you won’t get anything done.”
Other issues: Burdens on teachers, gun laws, beach dune issues
“There are some things regurgitating from the pandemic, such as the (deaths at) veterans homes,” Simonsen said. “They have to be looked into. There were things that weren’t done correctly. That is something we’re going to keep plugging on.”
“And these gun laws are over the top,” he said. “I’ve worked in the school system for 30 years and the assemblyman here works in the Sheriff’s Department. We’re all for safe gun laws but when you have people like myself and Antwan who follow the rules and do everything by the book and own handguns to shoot at the range or for whatever, the criminals don’t follow the rules. We’re putting these laws in place that basically punish the law-abiding citizens. I get it. There shouldn’t be automatic rifles sold, but as far as the law-abiding gun owner — stop going after them. They’re not the ones breaking the law.”
Simonsen said he and his colleague are also working with North Wildwood Mayor Patrick Rosenello on the beach erosion issue there.
North Wildwood is battling the state Department of Environmental Protection over work the city has done to repair severe dune damage from a fall storm.
“We’re kind of the connection to get through to the Governor’s Office and DEP to help out with stuff like that,” Simonsen said.
Simonsen also said he “is working to get rid of the SGOs and SGPs that have been burdening our teachers.”
An SGO is a Student Growth Objective and an SGP is a Student Growth Percentile, or how much a student improves his or her state testing performance from one year to the next.
“We have a teacher shortage as it is and there is just over-assessment on the teachers,” he said. “There are so many evaluations they have to do they don’t have the time to teach. I’m trying to clean that up.”
Simonsen is the athletic director at Lower Cape May Regional High School.
By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff