Police plan increased presence, but critics say they’re taking things too far
By BILL BARLOW /Special to the Sentinel
OCEAN CITY – A fight on the Boardwalk, coupled with problems with some groups of young bike riders, has Ocean City focused on teenagers.
On April 17, three girls – described in official statements as “female juveniles” – were taken into custody after an assault of another girl on the Boardwalk. Reports at the April 22 City Council meeting indicated one girl was taken to the hospital after the incident.
In a joint statement issued on April 19, Mayor Jay Gillian and Police Chief Jay Prettyman said Gillian had met with the victim’s mother and will continue to be in touch with her family.
“The public should be aware that a new Attorney General’s Directive on Juvenile Justice Reform limits the enforcement actions that may be taken in these situations,” reads the statement sent to residents and the media.
The December directive from Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal emphasizes curbside warnings from police officers for juveniles in cases of ordinance violations or activity that is “dangerous and disruptive, but not necessarily unlawful.” In essence, a curbside warning amounts to a talking to from an officer, even something as simple as an officer telling the young people to “knock it off.”
A copy of the directive, included as a link in the city’s statement, states that reforms to juvenile justice in New Jersey have dropped the number of juveniles in detention each year from about 12,000 to less than 2,500. Of those, young people described as “youth of color” accounted for almost 90 percent of the decline.
Prettyman addressed City Council on Thursday, discussing both the Boardwalk fight and the groups of kids riding bikes. In part because of the timing of the issue, and likely due to extensive discussion on social media pages, some members of the public and some on council conflated the two issues, believing that the bike riders were somehow involved in the assault.
Prettyman encouraged residents and business owners to call the police if something is amiss, even if it seems minor. He said there were only three calls on Saturday when the assault took place, and said two of them were from the same business. He said people should never feel like they are bothering officers.
“We cannot be everywhere. We need people to call us when things are happening,” he said. “A comment on social media does me no good. An email three days later does me no good. A phone call when something’s happening gets a police officer immediately dispatched to that area.”
Plans are to increase the police presence on the boardwalk and the city hired four more officers. He said beginning Monday, there will be more officers on the street at peak periods. He said a visible police officer can be an effective deterrent, especially with juveniles, he said.
Prettyman requested new limits on the hours bikes may be on the boardwalk, especially on spring weekends. The city also plans to use video to document illegal behavior and have more officers around town.
For the reckless bike riders, he said police will likely turn to motor vehicle summonses. Many people believe a juvenile on a bicycle cannot be given a ticket for riding in the wrong lane, recklessness or other violations, he said, but they can.
“I hear all of your ideas, but unfortunately a lot of your ideas are completely against the law right now,” Prettyman told council members. He said the state limits have not been helpful, and said officers are concerned about the possibility that they could be charged with a crime, “and actually lose their job, lose their pension, for trying to do something that they know is right.”
He also called for more community involvement and said he does not want to paint any portion of the community with a broad brush.
The meeting saw impassioned pleas for more community involvement from parents and others. The Rev. Gregory Johnson, a former member of City Council, said, “We have to work together as a community.”
He called on City Council to temper the rhetoric, saying parents and young people said members of council called them gangs and thugs.
“I said, ‘I think it’s time for me to come to see how we can help.’ I don’t think it’s right or fair to put labels on our kids, or to put our city in the spotlight, saying we have gangs and thugs,” he said.
Both Johnson and City Councilwoman Karen Bergman cited a letter, purportedly signed by five members of council, that included that language.
Council President Bob Barr had posted a letter, sent to Gillian and city businesses administrator George Savastano, which includes those phrases. In it, he mentions other members of council, praising their actions on the issue, but no one else signed it. In it, he wrote that “the behavior of these thugs” has been a concern for some time.
“Dating back to last year there has been a continuing and escalating problem with bike gangs on the boardwalk,” Barr wrote. “This past Saturday, April 17, 2021 these bike gangs were back in full force, intimidating guests, business owners and residents. Boardwalk stores were shuttered, families were run off the boardwalk in fear, and most importantly a young girl needed an ambulance after a confrontation with these thugs.”
“Our kids in Ocean City love this place,” Johnson said. “We worked very hard to give them a nice school, a nice community, a nice skateboard park, and I believe every one of you up there love our kids in this community.”
He called for a community meeting to discuss the bicycle issue.
“We work together to address issues in Ocean City. And we do not label our kids,” he said.
Other speakers went further.
“You have no idea what some of these adults are saying they’re going to do to our children,” said resident Sarah Gaddy, reporting on social media posts, saying some have suggested shooting or running over young people on bikes.
“She’s saying ‘take matters into your own hands,’” she said. “My kids are not perfect, but they don’t deserve this.”
She said she had no problem with the Ocean City police, but later described a disturbing incident.
“I’ve had an officer tell my child to get on the ground and put his F-ing hands in the air like an animal, and I was never called,” she said. She was told the kids matched a description of kids knocking on doors.
At the playground, kids are making videos for the popular platform Tik Tok, and getting threatened by neighbors, she said.
“You’re telling them they can’t play too loud at the park,” she said. “You’re telling them they can’t go here, they can’t go there. Where do you want them to go?”
“They look at the news and see nothing but police brutality against kids. And then I come here and hear how you guys are talking about children. I get that they’re being disruptive and right is right and wrong is wrong. But at the same time, this is Ocean City. There’s no thugs here. There’s no gangs here. There are kids that are riding on bikes after being stuck in the house for a whole year,” Ashley Boyer said.
She said she has lived in Ocean City her entire life and had never heard similar language aimed at the community’s children, and asked council for an apology.
Resident Jennifer Dahl said the best thing parents could do would be to get the kids to fill out a job application.
Councilman Michael DeVlieger said at the meeting that the issue with bike riders should not be taken lightly, saying the young people ride dangerously into traffic, flout traffic laws and play “chicken” with vehicles.
“If we can’t punish the kids and the kids know it, it emboldens the kids,” he said, describing young people doing wheelies toward his car on his side of the road. He stopped, but suggested if he failed to stop, he would have been sued for everything he owns.
“The parents would be sad, the kid would be dead and it would be very wrong, OK? But kids don’t think like adults,” he said. “If adults don’t think for kids and help them make good decisions, they’re going to do stupid things. That’s their job. There’s got to be a level of accountability somewhere.”
He brought statewide politics into the meeting, although Ocean City is officially a non-partisan town.
“If this doesn’t want to make you vote out our current governor and get rid of the attorney general, I don’t know what will,” DeVlieger said. “This year, we’ve got legalizing marijuana, we’ve got decriminalization of marijuana and alcohol for kids that are minors. You can’t punish them if they’re bad,” he said. “What is the logic? It’s ridiculous.”
He also spoke about disruptions at the North Street playground, where he said foul language and loud young people have disturbed the neighbors.
“I’m not going to tell you how to do your job, because you’re very good at it,” he told Prettyman at the meeting. “I’d like a car sitting at the North Street Playground from 6 p.m. til midnight.”
“The juveniles that we have in town, it’s like a bag of water. If we squeeze North Street playground it just pops up at Eighth Street,” Prettyman said. “So we need to get to the root of the problem, not just use a Band-Aid.”
“Those neighbors shouldn’t have to put up with it,” DeVlieger said. “Until we find the root, I’d like an officer to be there.”
He suggested going to the playground and letting the neighbors tell Gillian and Prettyman their concerns.
“You can see how it’s affecting these people and the quality of their lives. It’s just not fair,” DeVlieger said. Prettyman said he already does speak to residents, and his kids grew up going on that playground. He also said he would be happy to speak with the neighbors.
“It’s as simple as pleasure and pain. If we make it more painful for them to be bad, they’ll be good,” he said.
As Prettyman told council members, and Gillian reiterated, as police chief he does not take orders from the mayor or from city council on matters relating to law enforcement. The elected officials decide who will serve as the police chief and approves the budget, but he decides how the department operates.
Resident Jacob Hoffman said council spoke for hours about the kids riding bikes, but did not focus on what he described as the true problems in Ocean City, citing accusations of sexual harassment on the city’s beach patrol.
“That was never brought up,” he said.
The Cape May County Prosecutor’s Office has launched an investigation after allegations arose on a social media page of members of the beach patrol preying on young female guards.
At the end of the meeting, Council member Tomaso Rotondi said the matter is in the hands of law enforcement, but said the allegations “disgust me at the core.”
He suggested the city create a hotline for victims to come forward.
