By Steve Plunkett
The intrusion of unwelcome outsiders into Manalapan has only gotten worse in Vice Mayor Donald Brennan’s eyes.
“The beach is a war zone,” Brennan declared at the town’s March 27 commission meeting.
Brennan said an armed robbery in Ocean Inlet Park in December and two more incidents since then also involving guns had him “very, very worried.”
“I personally was recently in a confrontation with somebody on the front of my property who took the position that the beach belongs to everybody and get out of my face,” Brennan said.
“What am I going to do — pack up, go back to my house, call the police? By the time I call the police they’re gone.”
The week before was also disturbing, Brennan said. First he saw law enforcement officials with dogs on chains going through the bushes.
“And then to come back at 10 o’clock at night,” he said, “and be confronted by a group of young people who refuse to move — what’s my choice? Pick up my cell phone when they surround your car, tell them I’m going to call the police when all I want to do is get into my house, close the gate, double-lock the door and make sure that no one’s coming through it? Not a good thing.”
He said the outsiders break into beach houses and take furniture “to the other end of the beach” to use.
“It is not a safe place to send children down to. The encroachment of a lot of visitors, which are entitled to do it because of the public access at both ends, has created a vastly different climate than what I thought I was investing in here,” he said.
Brennan said he knows townsfolk are weighing the pros and cons of switching to the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office for police services, but that any change is months away.
“We’ve got to be doing something now,” he said.
“I think what you’re saying is more boots on the ground 24 hours a day,” Mayor Basil Diamond said.
Diamond noted that the three gun incidents took place south of Manalapan, in the county park or adjoining Ocean Ridge. “But nonetheless that’s too close, no matter what,” he said.
To prevent issues during spring break, the Sheriff’s Office posted special weekend enforcement details at the inlet and on the beach, Police Chief Carmen Mattox said. The extra patrols ended March 25.
Brennan said the conflicts extend to the Intracoastal side of Manalapan and the cove near the county park.
“An armada of small boats, young people doing what young people do, have created an atmosphere of confrontation between residents and visitors,” said Brennan, who has lived in town for 12 years. “And this is a dramatic change in what this community was when I came here.”
Commissioner Louis DeStefano, who is separated from the park by just two houses and has been in Manalapan for 21 years, said confrontation is not the answer.
“I’m down on the beach frequently,” he said. “If I don’t say anything to anyone, no one in all of the time I’ve been here — I’ve been on the beach a thousand times — there’s never been a problem.”
DeStefano said other residents may have different expectations of how the non-residents who flock to the cove and beach areas should act.
“Those people by and large don’t bother anyone. They’re families. They get a little rowdy sometimes. They play their music a little loudly,” he said. “I’m not saying there are no problems, but this is a matter of perception.”
Comments