Curfews, Beach Closings, Rental Bans: NJ Towns Battling Rowdy Teens On Many Fronts

SEASIDE HEIGHTS, NJ — On Saturday night of Memorial Day weekend, Seaside Heights police spent several hours dealing with a horde of teens who had flooded the boardwalk.

There were fights and rowdy behavior, and while it was far from the first time, Seaside Heights officials have decided it’s time to make it the last, joining other towns along the Jersey Shore that have instituted curfews for those under age 18.

“Memorial Day weekend was an exacerbation of problems with high school kids and young adults that have been ongoing in Seaside Heights for many years, 60-plus years in fact,” said Christopher Vaz, Seaside Heights borough administrator.

In Seaside Heights — and towns up and down the Jersey Shore — the problem has become exponentially worse over the last two summers, in part, officials and law enforcement officials say, because of the impact of a state law signed in 2021 that they say has limited the ability of police to deal with kids who are getting drunk or getting high and being unruly.

The result has been complaints from families, vacationers and year-round residents who are uncomfortable because of the rowdy and frequently belligerent behavior.

It has led to a game of Whack-a-Mole as towns try to find solutions that control kids without putting officers at risk of violating state civil rights statutes, with short-term rental bans and court orders. Curfews are the latest effort, and one they hope will quell the bad behavior.

Some towns have long had curfews for minors on the books, but others, including Toms River and Lavallette, Seaside Heights’ neighbors to the north, have enacted measures this year to address problems. Other towns, such as Point Pleasant Beach and Ocean City, have shut down beach access after a certain hour.

Ocean City was faced with similarly rowdy teen crowds over Memorial Day, resulting in 999 police calls, along with dozens of responses by firefighters and EMTs to treat people who were injured and teens who drank to excess. The city enacted emergency rules in early June, shutting the beaches at 8 p.m. and moving its curfew for minors to 11 p.m.

The city also had taken steps in January to give police officers the ability to deal with drunken and disorderly teens with a “breach of peace” ordinance that addressed a number of minor crimes, which Mayor Jay Gillian said was “a message to our governor and legislators that the laws they forced on all municipalities are a threat to public safety, and they deprive families of the opportunity to enjoy the Jersey Shore.”

The laws Gillian is referring to “essentially eliminated accountability for persons under 21 years of age,” Vaz said, and were passed as the state responded to the results of a 2020 statewide referendum that supported legalizing adult use of recreational cannabis.

Police cannot simply arrest teens for underage drinking anymore. Under a 2020 directive from the New Jersey Attorney General's office, along with language in the state's adult recreational marijuana law, police officers cannot make arrests based on smelling the odor. Law enforcement officials have said the legislation puts them at risk of criminal prosecution.

"Police use the power of observation to perform their duties as community caretakers, emergency aid providers, keepers of the peace, and law enforcement officers," said a petition urging the state to rethink a 2021 law allowing parental notification regarding teens using marijuana. "This involves utilizing all of one's senses, including the sense of smell. One of the most conspicuous manifestations of marijuana and alcohol use is the odor associated with their ingestion."

“Law enforcement officers now have to read dozens of pages of laws and Attorney General guidelines in order to figure out what they can and can’t do while often only having a split-second to make a decision,” Vaz said.

Law enforcement officials say the limitations are being exploited by teens. In Ortley Beach over the Fourth of July weekend in 2022, an 18-year-old from Park Ridge grabbed a decorative sign from someone’s home, then took off running when a police officer told him to stop.

The young man tried to tell police he was a juvenile and should be let go, Toms River police said later, but they were able to confirm he was 18 and took him to the Toms River municipal jail.

In another incident in Ortley Beach in 2022, a drunken 16-year-old from Millburn cursing and giving police officers the finger, then kicking them as she was arrested on a charge of disorderly conduct, and other teens pelted officers with rocks as they arrested her.

Compounding the problem is too many parents are uncooperative or don’t see an issue with their teens’ behavior, Toms River Police Chief Mitch Little has said.

The mother of the Millburn teen told police she knew her daughter would be drinking on the beach: it’s illegal for anyone under 21 to consume or possess alcohol in New Jersey.

Little said in cases where teens are forced to be picked up, parents drop them back off, unsupervised again, the next day and the problems begin again.

In early 2021, law enforcement officers across the state urged the state Attorney General’s office and Gov. Phil Murphy to reconsider the language that limited the ability of police to deal with minors who were smoking cannabis or intoxicated, but the pleas for assistance have gone nowhere.

That has left town officials searching for every option they can find to address unruly behavior.

Towns have banned short-term rentals, which became popular venues for pop-up parties during the pandemic: One such house party in the Baywood section of Brick drew 400 people on a July weekend in 2020.

A social media-driven party sparked outrage in Point Pleasant Beach in June 2020, and it was a harbinger of things to come: in June 2021, thousands of teens and young adults descended on Long Branch for a pop-up party on the beach in Pier Village.

Then it exploded in 2022, with unruly behavior up and down the coast. A Long Branch pop-up party drew 5,000 people and resulted in arrests, police using smoke grenades to disperse the crowds and a citywide curfew for everyone, not just minors.

Long Branch and Point Pleasant Beach turned to the courts to stop social media posts advertising parties, but in towns where teens were arriving with family members on vacation, the struggle was different and curfews became the solution.

Officials have been urging Gov. Phil Murphy and state Attorney General Matthew Platkin to take another look at the issue and do more to help towns deal with the problems, but there has been little outward response beyond advice for towns to “be prepared.”

Point Pleasant Beach Mayor Paul Kanitra said that advice ignored the cost to not only the town affected but to other towns that jump in to help when one is overwhelmed. Brick Township, Point Pleasant and other neighboring towns, plus the Ocean County Sheriff’s Office helped Point Beach during the 2020 incident.

“It’s not sustainable to keep allocating resources in case something happens,” Kanitra said in 2022. “Tax dollars are being totally wasted. Enough is enough.”

Towns are keeping watch on social media, looking for any hint of a pop-up party, and curfews are in place in towns from Sea Bright to Cape May, though they vary from area to area. Monmouth County curfews are typically 11 p.m. to 6 a.m.; in Ocean County, they begin at 10 p.m. in most places.

Point Pleasant Beach bars access to the beaches after 7 p.m. (except for special events arranged by permit) and has a curfew of 10 p.m. for minors (under loitering) that was enacted in 2015.

Brick Township has had a curfew in place of 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. since 1995; the township lacks the boardwalk and businesses in its barrier island stretch that typically draw teens. Mantoloking earlier this month enacted a resolution setting a similar curfew and is weighing instituting one by ordinance.

Long Beach Island towns also have curfews in place and have for years. Beach Haven, for example, enacted its ordinance in 2003.

Ocean City, which has long had the reputation of being a family friendly town because alcohol sales are banned there, hurried to put new rules in place after drunken teens flooded the beaches Memorial Day weekend there.

Curfews already exist in Wildwood Crest and Wildwood, and Cape May County officials have said they hope to get all of the towns on board with curfews to try to quell problems. A post-summer car rally in Wildwood in 2022 led to thousands of people pouring into the town and a chaotic night ended with two people being killed.

The curfews enacted this year in neighboring Toms River (by order of the police chief) and Lavallette (by resolution) led teens in those towns to head south to Seaside Heights, Vaz said, but he said the borough has been dealing with rowdy teens for decades, and shared a newspaper clipping from 1961 where borough officials were mulling an ordinance to ban rentals to minors because of rowdy parties. Prom parties, where adults rented motel rooms for high school students, also have been a thorn in the borough’s side for years.

Vaz said that while Seaside Heights decided to wait when other towns were banning short-term rentals in the more recent discussions, the Borough Council is moving forward now, guided “by the fact that potentially hundreds more additional homes and condo units could be built in the next few years in Seaside Heights.”

“Seaside Heights opted about 5 years ago to wait and see what happens here with short-term rentals, and now they understand after the past two months it is time for a change,” Vaz said.

Legislators, meanwhile, continue to push for change at the state level.

State Sen. Robert Singer (R-30th District) has been urging action on legislation he sponsors with Sen. Joe Pennacchio that updates the state’s riot law and creates the crimes of aggravated riot, inciting a riot, and aggravated inciting a riot to address pop-up parties.

The measure also addresses certain budgetary concerns related to law enforcement and provides that a municipality has a duty to allow law enforcement to respond appropriately to protect people and property during a riot or an unlawful assembly.

"It’s going to take a combination of legislation to better target the disruption caused by pop-up parties and a comprehensive playbook that state and local officials can use to guide a coordinated response to these increasingly dangerous events," Singer said in September 2022, after the Wildwood car rally. "Towns might have a hard time responding to large pop-up parties on their own, but they’ll have a much better chance of maintaining public safety if there are clear protocols for requesting and deploying additional local, county, and state resources when needed."