Three incidents, including a stabbing in Ocean City, cast a shadow over an otherwise lovely Memorial Day Weekend at the Jersey Shore. The Cape May County prosecutor says troublemakers are not welcome and will not be tolerated while Seaside Heights Mayor Anthony Vaz blamed a lack of respect from young people for the trouble.
There was a mad dash off the boardwalk in Seaside Heights after a rumor spread Saturday about shots being fired. A 15-year-old was stabbed in Ocean City on Saturday night, sustaining non-life-threatening injuries. And police in Wildwood closed down the boardwalk from midnight to 6 a.m. Monday after being flooded with calls about a large gathering of what the mayor called “unruly, undisciplined, unparented” teens.
Marleina Ubel with New Jersey Policy Perspective says while the Ocean City stabbing was very serious, the other two incidents were nothing really and she urges lawmakers not to overreact to the weekend by implementing heavy-handed enforcement initiatives, similar to the 1990s.
“And I think that what’s happening right now, these narratives that we’re seeing, and headlines, are reminiscent of that — and we should be careful,” Ubel said.
She says any sort of crackdowns or tough-on-crime policies will have a disproportionate impact on Black and low-income youth.
“We have tried this, and it doesn’t work,” she said.
On the other side, Mayor Vaz blamed bad parenting, saying to FOX News, "When I was young, I wasn't exactly an angel, but I feared repercussions if I did anything wrong, [and] that my parents, particularly my father, would take it into his own hands if I did something really bad," he said. "We don't have those parents today for the most part."
John Donio, president of the Wildwood Business Improvement District, says teens have been organizing larger crowds through social media and have been more difficult to manage than years ago.
What he sees are groups of kids, some as young as 14, arriving in town without any adult supervision and getting their hands on drugs or alcohol.
"Good kids become bad kids," he said. "If you have no respect, that's more than being disobedient.
“Normally when you see a friend group of 15-20 kids from the same school meeting up, now you’re seeing 400-500 kids meeting up and then what they’re doing is attracting other kids,” Donio said.
“But what this all boils down to, to me, is bad parenting. Where are the parents of these kids? It’s absolutely shameful.”
The Cape May County Prosecutor’s Office says bad decisions and bad actions will not be tolerated and police will use all tools and laws they can to arrest and charge all violators.
But Ubel says teens have been gathering forever, and hanging out isn’t a crime. She wants everyone to keep things in perspective.
“Crime is not up. It just isn’t. It’s on a downward trend,” she said. “And not only is it on a downward trend nationally, it is on a downward trend in Seaside Heights and Wildwood.”
In Seaside Heights, Mayor Vaz has imposed a summer-long 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew for anyone under 18. He told Fox News there has been a monumental shift in recent years in how teens interact with not just police, but all adults.
While lax parenting can't be regulated, cities can follow the example of spring break locations like Miami and Gulf Shores, which have tackled similar issues with groups of unruly youths, according to Betsy Banter Smith, a former police sergeant and a spokesperson for the National Police Association.
"What they have done is adopted an absolute zero-tolerance policy not just toward the mayhem, but toward alcohol use, things like that," Smith told Fox News. "I think it would be great for these Jersey Shore mayors and police leaders to talk about it, advertise 'we're not gonna tolerate this,' and they're going to have to follow through on it."