Shore towns have their say on teens at GOP Senate hearing

Press of Atlantic City

By Bill Barlow

Part of the Jersey Shore’s teen problem is about perception, state Sen. Michael Testa, R-Cape May, Cumberland, Atlantic, said Wednesday during a virtual hearing on the issue. But perception can shape reality.

Officials from Ocean City, Wildwood and Long Branch, Monmouth County, joined Republican lawmakers for the event, which was streamed on social media. Testa said repeatedly during the hearing that he does not see the problem, or the solution, in partisan terms, but at the same time cited Democratic initiatives as contributing to the problem while saying Republican bills remain hung up in committees without moving forward.

“I implore the other side of the aisle to listen,” Testa said, and to move some of the legislation that Republicans have brought forward. Citizens are demanding safety, he said.

Many of the issues raised will seem intimately familiar to anyone following news out of shore communities over the past several summers, with large crowds of juveniles accused of disrupting beach communities and local officials decrying a lack of respect for police and other authorities.

Ocean City Councilman Jody Levchuk, who also owns businesses on the Boardwalk, participated in the hearing along with Wildwood Mayor Ernie Troiano Jr. and William Braughton, the public safety director for Long Branch. Ocean City Community Services Director Michael Allegretto sat in for Mayor Jay Gillian, while police chiefs Bill Campbell of Ocean City and Joseph Murphy of Wildwood spoke in the second hour. Cape May County Sheriff Bob Nolan was also set to speak but was called away.

Each told a similar story, that juvenile justice reforms have gone too far, and that combined with current disrespectful attitudes toward police, a lack of consequences at home and the expanding influence of social media, many of those under 18 feel few restraints on their behavior.

“These kids have little to no respect for anyone,” Troiano said. “No respect for themselves, no respect for their friends, no respect for the police, officials, adults. Just a total lack of respect for any form of authority.”

Communities feel like they cannot enforce the law, Troiano said.

Both Wildwood and Ocean City reported significant problems with teens on their boardwalks over Memorial Day weekend, including multiple fights. In Ocean City, that included a 15-year-old being stabbed, while Wildwood declared a state of emergency and closed the Boardwalk.

The stabbed teen is expected to recover, and charges have been filed against another juvenile.

While the issues and their coverage have intensified since the COVID-19 pandemic, after which many attributed the boisterous gatherings to so many young people being isolated for so long, similar complaints were common in the 1990s in many beach towns, and there have been waves of concern about juvenile delinquency in each decade since the 1960s.

At one point, Troiano mentioned a fight between students at parochial schools in Philadelphia that took place on the Wildwood Boardwalk, and Assemblyman Antwan McClellan, R-Cape May, Cumberland, Atlantic, mentioned local teens in Ocean City behaving poorly when he was young, although he used it to illustrate the respect for law enforcement at the time.

“When we were younger, we would run from the police,” he said.

McClellan was joined by fellow 1st District Republican Erik Simonsen, while 2nd District Assembly members Claire Swift and Don Guardian, both R-Atlantic, were also in attendance.

There was no immediate response from Senate Republicans to an emailed question as to whether any Democrats were invited, and there was no immediate response to a request for comment from Gov. Phil Murphy’s office or from the office of Senate President Nicholas Scutari.

Wildwood and Ocean City officials maintained their communities remain safe.

Levchuk described the stabbing as a significant incident but also indicated it had been blown out of proportion in the media, calling it a “one-off.”

“Nobody’s going to get stabbed today. Nobody’s going to get mugged today on our Boardwalk,” Levchuk said. “It’s wildly safe; we just have a teenager problem. It needs to be addressed.”

Testa said the severity of the concerns is a matter of perception but added that perception has a way of becoming a reality. Several times, he mentioned tourism as a multibillion-dollar industry and the economic driver for shore communities. Shore towns are seen as clean and safe, but if that perception changes, it would be tough to get back, Testa and other speakers said.

Some businesses have reported visitors canceling trips out of concern for safety, or for the safety of their teenage children.

Towns also are having trouble recruiting new officers. Troiano said Wildwood would usually significantly increase its staff of Class II officers, who have police training but are not full-time officers, but this year there are few applicants.

He said the city wanted 40 or 50 but will end up with seven.

Several of the speakers cited movements to “defund the police” and demonstrations held in 2020 as discouraging young people from pursuing careers in law enforcement and demoralizing the current officers.

Locally, and nationally, large crowds demonstrated against police brutality in 2020 as part of the Black Lives Matter movement, sparked by the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. Several officers have faced charges, lawsuits or discipline in that incident, while former officer Derek Chauvin was sentenced to more than 20 years in prison for murder.

Testa said police have been unfairly demonized, and several of the speakers said crowds of teens have been hostile to uniformed officers.

Wildwood has looked to the Cape May County Sheriff’s Office for additional support on weekends, and Troiano had praise for Murphy, saying the governor had been in contact and has arranged for State Police help for Wildwood.

Braughton said officials also need to look to social media, where pop-up parties that can draw hundreds of teens are organized without accountability or local coordination. He suggested laws pushing social media companies to release identifying information on the organizers, and for legal consequences for those people.

Chief Murphy in Wildwood said police carefully monitor social media for such events, especially after an unauthorized car rally turned deadly in 2022. In fact, on Wednesday, Wildwood police reported preemptively shutting down a pop-up party allegedly planned for this weekend.

Ocean City Chief Campbell said parents must face also consequences.

“The entire juvenile justice system needs to be reformed,” he said.