Unruly Teens Cause Chaos, Spark State of Emergency and Boardwalk Closure in Wildwood, NJ

The pop­u­lar New Jer­sey shore des­ti­na­tion, Wild­wood, was forced to take dras­tic mea­sures after a wave of “unruly” teenagers dis­rupt­ed the Memo­r­i­al Day weekend. 

The town declared a state of emer­gency and closed its icon­ic board­walk ear­ly Sun­day morn­ing, May 28th, 2024.

Local author­i­ties report­ed an over­whelm­ing num­ber of calls involv­ing a large group of young adults and juve­niles vis­it­ing the Wild­wood boardwalk. 

The sit­u­a­tion esca­lat­ed to the point where offi­cials had to shut down the board­walk past mid­night, cit­ing “civ­il unrest” that over­whelmed police resources.

“Wild­wood has zero tol­er­ance for unruly or undis­ci­plined behav­ior,” said Wild­wood May­or Ernie Troiano, Jr. in a state­ment. “We ful­ly sup­port our police depart­ment in pro­tect­ing the com­mu­ni­ty from dis­rup­tive crowds.”

The state of emer­gency allowed Wild­wood to deploy a sig­nif­i­cant­ly increased police pres­ence to address the issues. How­ev­er, this heavy response also meant “cer­tain calls for ser­vice with­in the city” could not be imme­di­ate­ly addressed.

The board­walk reopened around 5:30 am on Sun­day, with a coin­ci­den­tal rain­storm fur­ther dis­pers­ing the remain­ing crowds. Offi­cials declined to elab­o­rate on spe­cif­ic inci­dents, cit­ing respect for the Memo­r­i­al Day holiday.

This clo­sure fol­lows a stab­bing inci­dent involv­ing a 15-year-old on the Ocean City board­walk the day before. These events high­light the chal­lenges faced by New Jer­sey shore towns in man­ag­ing large crowds and dis­rup­tive behav­ior dur­ing peak tourist seasons.