Policing and city risk and reputational management: Ocean City, Maryland | Create beach ambassadors to deescalate visitor management

The Washington Post writes, "Ocean City boardwalk: Violent arrests of unarmed young men raise questions about policing," about a bunch of violent policing episodes in the beach section of Ocean City, Maryland.  

The city has rules about "vaping on the boardwalk" and the crowds get more unruly as the night goes on and people become more inebriated. 

The need to redefine what public safety means and how to deliver it.  It's a particularly good example of the need for rearticulating how to deal with public safety in a broader and more nuanced fashion ("The opportunity to rearticulate public safety delivery keeps being presented"). 

Police often escalate even the mundane.  It occurred to me while reading the article that there is an element of "police escalating a situation" that hasn't been adequately identified in all the recent analysis of overpolicing, warrior policing, "defund" etc.

I had a few experiences with cops in my teens and 20s that left me negatively disposed. 

My sense was that because police officers mostly deal with criminals on hard things: 

(1) they tend to believe that everyone they deal with is a criminal.  (At least that's the way I perceived my interactions.  That's how I felt I was treated.)

(2) they escalated the situation(s) almost immediately, not violently with tasers or guns, but "socio-emotionally" by immediately assuming the worst of the situation and the people they encountered, and communicating this in everything they said and did.

I'm a pretty nondescript white guy as were the people I was with.

This form of escalation hasn't been identified as an issue, but it likely contributes to escalation of the many incidents that quickly become violent.. 

Policing and risk management.  And a good example that elected officials don't look at policing as a risk management issue, and such incidents should be seen as indicators that there is a problem that should be addressed ("Where is the risk management approach to police misconduct and regularized killings of citizens?").

Tourism as an invasion, and the attack response?  Ocean City is a town of 7,000 people year around--90% white, but grows by at least 250,000 week by week throughout the summer, and 40% or more of visitors are people of color.  

The police department isn't huge, and augments its force every summer with "temporary officers."  Most are white.  And the article describes a number of troubling incidents, not limited to the temporary officers.

A town that grows 300x every week throughout the summer must feel like an invasion to many of the residents and the city more generally.  

Other cities face the same issues.  Either with Spring Break or other special events ("Police chief: End truck meet -- 300 police officers trying to control 50,000 visitors," Dayton Beach News-Journal) or more generally like Amsterdam ("'Don't come to Amsterdam.' Dutch capital tells rowdy tourists to stay away," CNN), Barcelona ("Can Barcelona Fix Its Love-Hate Relationship With Tourists After the Pandemic?," TIME Magazine), and Venice, and are trying to take special measures to reduce the impact.  

Thinking of this as an invasion may well carry over into the attitude of the police officers and how they interact with visitors.  And frankly, some of the incidents might cause them to feel that way (" Maryland Men Charged With Setting Car On Fire, Shooting Into House Of Women They Met At Seacrets, Ocean City," CBS Baltimore).

The boardwalk sits between the sand of the beach and the long strip of businesses -- hotels, retail, taverns, rental shops, etc. -- facing the ocean.  Photo: Julia Hatmaker, Harrisburg Patriot-News.

Vaping on the boardwalk the equivalent of traffic stops as opportunities for escalation?  A number of incidents have been around vaping, as smoking and vaping is forbidden on the beach and boardwalk.  

It reminds me of the really great discussion lately about traffic stops and how they are used by police as a way to initiate "stop and search" ("WHAT TRAFFIC ENFORCEMENT WITHOUT POLICE COULD LOOK LIKE," The Appeal; "Traffic without the police," Stanford Law Review, 73: 2021).  

As part of the "defund"/rearticulation of public safety discussion, traffic stops are being brought up, that they should only be made for true traffic violations, not as an excuse to create the opportunity for an arrest.

Smoking or vaping on the beach, like traffic stops, is an opportunity for escalation and for things to go awry in unexpected ways with terrible consequences.

Lifeguard station in Ocean City.  Image from the city website.

Lifeguards for the water, beach ambassadors for the sand.  I hate smoking, so have no problem with the ban.

But like how lifeguards are hired to manage people in the water ("Ocean City Beach Patrol Works Hard, Rescues 557 Swimmers This Summer," OCNJDaily, "n Ocean City, another lifeguard season begins — two minutes early," Baltimore Sun), from the perspective of rearticulating how public safety is defined and delivered, I'd create positions--beach ambassadors--to manage the sand side of the beach in a similar way, shifting from the more coercive approach of police officers.  

Beach ambassadors in Virginia Beach wear bright yellow shirts.  Photo: WAVY-TV.

It turns out Virginia Beach already does this ("Beach ambassadors: They don’t police, but they play a role in keeping Virginia Beach safe," Norfolk Virginian-Pilot) as do other communities.  From the article:

“We’re not here to police,” she said. “We’re here to basically bring calm and reassurance.” 

Beach ambassadors are stationed on every block in the resort area and are roaming at other city beaches. The city has a $1.2 million contract with IMGoing for the service, which likely will continue through Labor Day weekend, Deputy City Manager Ron Williams said. The money is coming from the Tourism Investment Program fund. 

According to their job description, beach ambassadors are to serve as a “welcoming committee” for visitors. They are to remind people of the beach guidelines, which are also posted on signs along the beach and the Boardwalk.

Ocean City calls the lifeguards the Beach Patrol.  They can include beach ambassadors within the same program.   From the Sun article:

“They’re the ambassadors down here,” he said of the lifeguards, new and old. “They've been trained on how to talk to people.”

Some communities, with smaller crowds, and fewer order issues, have volunteer beach ambassador programs.  But cities dealing with large crowds, like Ocean City or Virginia Beach, need more formal programs.

The "beach ambassadors" would manage the beach and boardwalk the way that lifeguards manage the water.  And they should not just be drawn from Ocean City and the surrounding county, which are predominately white, but also from communities like Baltimore or Harrisburg where many of the young visitors originate.

Recommendations to Ocean City.  (1) Ocean City ought to be addressing public safety from a risk management and tourism reputation standpoint and manage it accordingly. 

Although probably a lot of visitors reading articles like the one in the Post blame the people "served" by the cops, and won't change their plans to visit.

(2) Hire a crew of police officers more reflective of the demographics of summer visitors rather than the demographics of the permanent residents who are 90% white. 

(3) The police need to be trained super well in terms of the likely issues, crowd control, and especially de-escalation. 

(4) Create a crew of Beach Ambassadors to provide softer management of the beach and boardwalk, tot de-emphasize coercion and police presence, but with police as back up as needed.  

Conclusion: create a community safety partnership for the beach.  In some ways, the tourist "invasion" should be seen as a nuisance, and managed proactively and professionally ("Creating 'community safety partnership neighborhood management programs as a management and mitigation strategy for public nuisances: Part 3 (like homeless shelters)").  Business improvement districts and the way they provide extra-normal services including public safety management are one example of how to do it.