By JOSEPH KELLARD
Starting at about 2:30 p.m. on May 22, the Long Beach Police Department received calls about fights among youths on the beach at Riverside, Edwards and National boulevards. �Between 2:30 and 3 we got a couple of calls about fighting springing up here and there on the beach,� said LBPD spokesman Lt. Bruce Meyer. �One came in as possible fighting, and the second call, at about 3 p.m., was about a large fight, and at that point we requested mutual aide from the 4th Precinct.�
Meyer said that once police arrived, the fighting and heated words had ceased and no one was arrested, but because of the large number of youths who were there on a day when lifeguards were not yet on duty, police thought it best to close the beach. �In the interest of public safety, we thought the wise thing to do would be to get the people off the beach and disperse the kids in an orderly fashion,� Meyer said.
Scott Kemins, first deputy commissioner of the Fire Department, said that one teenage male with a facial laceration was transported to the Long Beach Medical Center. �I don�t know what he said caused it,� said Kemins, who was not in the ambulance with the youth.
Sharron Player, an LBMC spokeswoman, said the hospital was not inundated with calls that afternoon, but treated the one young man for his injury. �Whether that was related to that incident, we�re not sure,� Player said. �Nurses don�t always ask people how they got their cuts or bruises, and they�re not always forthcoming with that information.�
Paul Gillespie, chief of lifeguards, said some guards were on the beach that day, setting up for the Memorial Day weekend and driving up and down the beach looking to keep young people out of the ocean. �We realized that kids had no school that day, so we had three of our trucks on the beach to do some maintenance work,� Gillespie said of last Friday, when the Long Beach School District calendar was marked �Closed for Memorial recess� and �Possible snow makeup day.�
According to Gillespie, some of the 1,000-plus kids who were there that day told lifeguards they were from Hempstead, Roosevelt and Uniondale high schools. �They told us it was senior cut day,� said Gillespie, who added that one teen had drunk too much alcohol and was taken away by friends.
Gillespie also said that police asked the lifeguards to help them get everyone, youths and adults alike, off the beach and boardwalk. �They cleared the beach right away, within about 20 minutes,� he said.
One ocean-front resident on Monroe Boulevard, who declined to be identified, said he was in his living room when he noticed a Nassau County police SUV driving west on the beach with sirens blaring and lights flashing and, later, saw the lifeguards helping with crowd control. �I live here 30 years and never saw a Nassau police vehicle on our beach,� he said. �I took my binoculars up to the roof and saw some kind of large commotion on the beach at Edwards Boulevard. A lifeguard pickup truck was using a loudspeaker to tell people, �The beach is closed by order of the Long Beach Police Department, and all vehicles parked illegally are being towed.��
The resident said that the NCPD helicopter made about a dozen passes over the beach, flying as far east as Lincoln Boulevard, then turning around and flying west to National on each pass. �My neighbors said that the boardwalk was packed all day and that bikers were being threatened for asking these kids to get out of the bike lane,� he said.
An employee at the new Allegria Hotel expressed concern after seeing county police cars parked on Broadway and officers directing people off the beach. �There was a helicopter and police,� she said, �and I was told that, typically, Nassau County police aren�t called to the scene unless it�s bad. They just cleared the boardwalk ...�
Meyer said that as police disbursed the youths, �For the most part, they left in an orderly fashion. They were out for a good time.� He said that he took calls from concerned citizens, some of whom had heard there was a riot on the beach, 40 people were taken to the hospital and one man was stabbed to death. �Everything has been grossly exaggerated,� he said.
Comments about this story? JKellard@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 213.
