OCEAN CITY — In the wake of arguably the worst motorized special event weekend ever, Ocean City’s elected this week promised bold action and perhaps painful solutions to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
While the official H2O International (H2Oi) car show held for years at Fort Whaley west of Berlin was cancelled two weeks ago, thousands of the enthusiasts came anyway as planned last weekend. To be sure, there was a percentage of attendees that obeyed the town’s laws and ordinances and respected their host community, but many came on a mission of racing up and down the streets, snarling traffic, littering and instigating the Ocean City Police Department (OCPD) officers and their allied partners attempting to maintain some semblance of order. The chaos reached a crescendo on Saturday night when a vehicle intentionally drove into two police officers, forcing the officers to fire their service weapons at the suspects, before the driver was ultimately caught swimming in the bay.
On Monday afternoon, OCPD Chief Ross Buzzuro issued a statement calling the behavior of some of the weekend event’s participants appalling. On Monday night, the Mayor and Council had the opportunity to weigh in echoed the chief’s sentiments. The town’s elected officials for years have struggled with how best to handle the motorized special events so prevalent in the shoulder seasons and the solution has always been an increased police presence with the OCPD and its allied law enforcement agencies from around the region.
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13 comments:
OCPD talks tough but doesn't have the professionalism or the know-how to do much of anything to quell an unruly incident.
OCPD is incapable of handling this type of incident. Ren-a-cops. No professionalism.
Don't want him in Maryland.
Whoa...
(1) The car that rammed the 2 officers where behind a building measuring out baggies of pot. The numbnut teenager (with a awful mindset of law enforcement officials) said along the lines I'd rather die than go to jail. SOOO lets blame that on the CANCELLED H2Oi.
(2) Mayor Rickie opined "..as Mayor I'm pretty open-minded.." (HAHAHAHAHAHA as long as a buck is involved Rickie).."to quote the chief, their behavior was appalling and its not compatible with OC and its not compatible with our community." For the love of, someone explain to me the WEEKS long June Bugs who invade our City each and EVERY year for decades upon decades? Their behavior is ALWAYS appalling and never compatible with OC or our community.
(3) Discouraging the event in the future or eliminating it altogether. Well there you go, FINALLY an official admission of H2Oi since OC has never sponsored the event. Hmmmm, since every darn thing OC has "tried" to put a kibosh on H2Oi - maybe now is an opp to embrace it and work with the promoter. WHY NOT since everything else has been a failure. The prior manpower/expense all for nothing/failure and not the outrage by City FAIL. WOW. How the heck can you eliminate something you have no control over? How much $$$$$$ will be needed to "attempt" that shot from the hip philosophy? I mean come on, same City FAIL who NEEDS to put walls up in the median's (over $4 millions dollars) so a few drunks from Seacrets cannot play frogger across Coastal Highway.
(4) Changing traffic patterns on Coastal Highway. HAHAHAHAAHHA any changes would make traffic worse to an island that has AWFUL traffic enforcement every Sunny Saturday from Mid Apr to Mid Oct.
(5) Partnership with all stakeholders. HAHAHAHA with businesses? Those who rely on money in a resort town?? You all never can get on the same page for anything...from room counts, controlling businesses on the boardwalk, panhandlers, beggers, bums...ALL this because you cannot control an event. WOW. Then Wayne piping in about this type of activity in town is embarrassing. Whats truly embarrassing is any attempt by City FAIL over something that continues year in and year out.
Challenge is you haven't been able to control this event because you didn't recognize it. Now you hear city residents screaming??? Something isn't right here. Its laughable when Rickie mentions the word DEPLORABLE when describing the event. Prior events - beyond H20i were much worse with destruction/unruliness/disrespect for law enforcement (when there was NEVER enough LEOs), but its not talked about since those events were sanctioned by OC.
All talk about being strong, standing strong with business and city owners. How about trying this - embrace the event promoter, keep a full staff of OC LEOs through October (since we always know events go through the end of October in this RESORT town), and instead of trying to block off traffic and really anger merchants/residents - ARREST the NUMBNUTS, fill up the JAIL and take their cars away.
THAT would be strong, sound measure and get everyone's attention for future events!
Gray beard cruizers are in this weekend, don't make an example of them because they bring $$$$$$$$$$ in to spend! But alas, you probably will over do it this weekend and bite the hand that FEEDS this resort!
Organizations need to exit OC and go else ware. I quit going 6yrs ago because of OCPD and Council started their antics. When these organizations exit OC and they lose millions in revenue then they will beg them back and return to common sense related to these events. They want their money and then act stupid on regulations when they know what to expect before they sign a contract.
OCPD is made up of cops that think they are an "elite" agency.What a joke. Those bums wouldnt know a real crime if it bit them in the ass. They issue smoking and dog citations all day and think they are real cops. Give me a break.
EVERYBODY has a complaint here. NOBODY has an answer. ("4:19" thinks he does, but he's so wrong on so many points that it's laughable.)
First and foremost: You simply cannot tell a group - any group - that they can't come to town. Let's start there.
2. The "promoter" has absolutely zero to do with this group. He rented Whaley last year; got some vendors to pay him to set up shop; and that was it.
3. These people are coming no matter what is said and done... EXCEPT:
Look up what Myrtle Beach did to get rid of their "biker problem" about 7 or 8 years ago, and that was to pass many civil ordinances targeted at motorcycles.
You couldn't sneeze on a bike in MB without getting a summons. They left town after one more year. Got the message, I guess.
Lastly... I would figure there was about 150,000 or more in town that weekend. Show me another city - especially one that basically has one main thoroughfare - that wouldn't have problems with some bad apples in the crowd.
So ya'll stop bitchin' and offer some answers. I'm sick of hearing about it.
Here's my answer.
There is absolutely no place for these cars to go except to form a constant 'parade' on Coastal Highway.
No empty parking lots, no inlet parking lot, no convention center, no nothing.
They need a destination (a big one!) outside of town with vendors, music, and whatever else floats their boat.
Maybe a farm or something? (I didn't say I had ALL the answers!) Something along the line of the Punkin' Chunkin' locations.
Something like this would take a thousand or so cars off of Coastal and make the scene a bit more manageable to LE.
This ain't Baltimore or Philly or DC - it's a RESORT town. People may get a bit crazy, but there's not the violence on a scale you would see elsewhere. In that way, yeah, they are "elite".
Myrtle beach did handle the biker problem, by hosting a ghetto biker weekend. They now wish they had the old biker problem! YouTube shows it all!
Your turning away a lot of good money for a handful of bad people. You can't quadruple the number of police in town one weekend and point to a spike in arrests as proof that the group is bad. OC is shady any day of the summer, and not any extra on H2O weekend.
The more OC says they don't want them the more it makes them want to come. OC is not a family resort. It has more bars then anything else. Also, if people really knew how much crime goes on in OC they would not visit. The town is full of drugs, drug addicts, criminals, and the amount of rapes that go on there would surprise people.
1:57:
OK.... OC is an town of over 300,000 people on an average 'high season' day and night. That's more that's the entire city of Pittsburgh PA.
Do you really think that today's society stops at the end of the Route 50 or Route 90 bridges?
Do me a favor. Tell me where you go on vacation where there is no crime, no problems, no people that are obnoxious or other than law-abiding.
Tell me that and I will go there.
(If you try to say Disney World, forget it. They have more crime per year than OC does in a packed summer season.)
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