Tybee Police Chief Bob Bryson pledged a “heavily proactive” approach to monitoring Saturday’s anticipated Orange Crush festivities.
Law enforcement will use ground and air-based video surveillance, undercover officers and a road safety checkpoint on 18th Street in policing the annual informal gathering of young adults, many of them African-American. The effort is in response to resident complaints about noise, lewd behavior and littering following last year’s Orange Crush.
Click here to view Spotted® photos from Orange Crush 2011
“Orange Crush has been fine from a police standpoint in recent years, but we are ramping up enforcement this year because people are petrified,” Bryson said. “We’re going to have zero tolerance, and everybody we arrest we will transport to the Chatham County jail.”
The enforcement strategy will not include safety checkpoints along U.S. 80 as motorists come onto the island, a tactic popular in the past but one Bryson does not favor. Employing such a road block, or shutting down part of the road for use as an emergency lane, snarls all traffic coming onto Tybee.
Such congestion would impact the Tybee Wine Festival going on Saturday at the lighthouse as well as more than half-a-dozen weddings, Bryson said.
Police will focus on south end traffic instead. Bryson plans to close the south beach parking lots as soon as those areas fill with cars. The aim is to curb the cruising problems encountered in recent years.
As for the trash ostensibly generated by the event — documented last year in a YouTube video — Tybee’s public works department will dispatch a beach clean-up crew late Saturday afternoon.
Officials are concerned much of the afternoon’s trash could be washed out to sea if not collected in advance of low tide at 6:52 p.m.
“We don’t want a repeat of what we saw on the YouTube video last year,” City Council member Wanda Doyle said.
Orange Crush is an unofficial event organized by word of mouth and social media sites. Regulars attempted to formalize this year’s gathering. They applied to the city of Tybee and Chatham County for permits to hold events in the 14th Street parking lot and the county-owned Tybee Pier and Pavilion.
Tybee rejected the 14th Street permit, and organizers pulled their application with Chatham County to use the pier. Rumors that organizers had re-applied and been granted a pier permit earlier this week are unfounded, according to Al Lipsey, Chatham's deputy director of public works and park services.
Orange Crush was a contentious topic Wednesday during the Tybee Island Tourism Council’s monthly meeting. Board members expressed concerns about public safety, sanitation and the impact on businesses.
A manager of the Ocean Plaza Beach Resort, which fronts the 14th Street parking lot, told the board he has hired four additional security guards for Saturday to protect the property.
“Orange Crush is not a boon for business,” Aristotle Pantelis said.
