In a twist, Margate police say nice things about Pa. teens on their beach

MARGATE — Just as they did Memorial Day weekends of the last few years, hundreds of teens flocked to Margate’s beaches and stood around, drinking, well, something out of their Wawa iced tea bottles.

But unlike other years, there were no viral videos of Margate police slamming teens to the sand to control them, and the usual crowds roaming around the nearby Wawa, dubbed Club Wa, were manageable, Margate officials said Tuesday.

The difference? A stepped-up police and security presence, in which Margate police were stationed at beach entrances from Decatur to Monroe Avenues, rode around on ATVs, and walked the crowd in street (or beach), clothes from the time the teens arrived until they left (mostly in Ubers).

Margate police even brought trash bags to the beach Friday, Saturday, and Sunday and asked the young people to clean up after themselves. Some did, including Reed Sullivan, whose work was celebrated by the police department on Facebook.

“MCPD would like to give a big thanks to our friend Reed!” the police department said on its Facebook page in a post liked by more than 700 people. "He saw the trash left behind by some of the beachgoers and decided to do something about it. He spent most of his day Sunday cleaning up and making sure the beaches looked good. This year many of the kids enjoying themselves on the beach took it upon themselves to help clean up, but none as much as Reed.

“Thanks to Reed, and all the others who helped keep our beaches clean!”

Sullivan, of Villanova, commented that he filled 33 bags of trash. (“thank you guys so much for the trash bags! ended the day filling up 33 bags. thank you guys again for all of the help today, really appreciate it," Sullivan wrote.)

Margate Capt. Matthew Hankinson said that the crowds were large all over Margate (and the entire Shore), but that the police did not encounter any undue problems on the beaches frequented by the high school and college-aged kids, most of whom are from the Philadelphia suburbs.

“We took a different approach,” Hankinson said. “We interacted with the kids. They’ve had a tradition for schools to come down. We wanted to start a new tradition where everyone enjoys themselves and cleans up afterward.”

He said many of the teens said they were staying in Airbnbs or in Atlantic City, and there were lines of Ubers and Lyfts waiting along the beaches to take them away.

“A lot of people coming off the beach were appreciative,” he said.

All was also relatively calm in Wildwood, another town that in prior Memorial Day weekends had found itself with unwanted national attention from viral video of police encounters with underage drinkers. (See last year’s notorious arrest of Philadelphia’s Emily Weinman, still currently banned from Wildwood.)

“Just a typical Memorial Day weekend, nothing crazy,” said Wildwood Commissioner Pete Byron, who noted robust crowds that filled the boardwalk and beaches.

“People came down in greater numbers than we anticipated,” he said. “If this is any indication, it’s going to be a great summer.”

In Margate, Hankinson said there were just two ordinance violations all weekend, and that in general, the crowds were well-behaved, or at least discreet.

“The kids aren’t dumb," he said. “Everyone’s holding a Wawa iced tea bottle. What we know and what we can prove are different. In the digital age, every kid’s on Snapchat, every kid’s on Instagram. Around 4 p.m., there was a line of Ubers and Lyfts taking kids all over the place.”

Commissioner John Amodeo, who said he monitored the situation all weekend both in person and via Margate’s beach and city webcams (cc: parents) called the weekend “incident free” despite what many in town believed was the most crowded Memorial Day weekend in memory.

With beach patrol headquarters now 13 feet in the air at Decatur Avenue, police had a clear view of the beach and could anticipate any problems before they got out of control, Amodeo said. He said there was one arrest for cannabis, another for an open-container violation in which the person tried to run.

“What did we do when we were kids? The same thing,” Amodeo said. “They were a well-behaved crowd. The police did an outstanding job controlling the crowd.”