To prepare seniors and their parents for the infamous week of drunkenness and debauchery that is Beach Week, local parents held a discussion with Dewey Beach police officers March 19 at Walter Johnson HS.

Moderator and WJ parent Pam Marquez prefaced the event by emphasizing that Beach Week is not a school-condoned activity. Afterwards, Dewey Beach police officers Cliff Dempsey and Billy Hooker spoke to the packed cafeteria of Whitman, WJ, Wootton, B-CC, Churchill and private school students and parents about the dangers of Beach Week.

“Now, mom and dad are not there,” Dempsey said. “And I bet you more than half, if not three-quarters, of you will walk into one of these places and have that feeling in your stomach that something bad is ready to happen. When you put that many kids together in an uncontrolled environment, bad things do happen. People do get arrested.”

Dempsey and Hooker tried to dispel the notion that Beach Week is a rite of passage for teens and singled out teenage drinking as one of their biggest concerns during Beach Week. Last year, the Dewey Beach police arrested 120 students for alcohol consumption, Hooker said. In the past, the jailhouse became so over crowded at times that high school students were confined to vans outside of the police station, in lieu of actual cells.

To scare prospective beach-goers away from meeting similar fates, Dempsey called on volunteers, students Cleo and Juliet, from the audience and presented them with a hypothetical situation to see how they would react if an alcohol-related crisis occurred while they were at the beach.

“You guys are just having a good time,” Dempsey said. “Juliet says, ‘I’m feeling bad.’ She takes another drink, and she goes upstairs and goes to bed. Maybe half an hour or 45 minutes go by, and you want to go check on her because you’re nervous. You walk in. She’s lying on the ground facedown, in a puddle of vomit. She’s urinated and defecated on herself. What are you going to do?”

But not all of the meeting focused on alcohol consumption. Hooker also explained the differences between Delaware state law and local Dewey Beach ordinances, such as the 11:00 p.m. weeknight curfew, parking regulations and the noise level policy. He also talked about how minors and 18-year-old students are treated differently by the law—18 year olds, for example, do not need to alert their parents about any arrests, but their arrest stays on their adult criminal record, while under 18-year-olds have all transgressions put on a juvenile record that is later expunged.

Then, the police officers explained to parents how to keep their children safe at the beach, offering strategies such as renting a nearby beach house for the week or dropping by unexpectedly. When the police officers finished addressing the entire room and hosting a general Q&A session, Dempsey and Hooker split up to field questions from parents and students in separate rooms.

In the student Q&A session, there was a mix of earnest questions and questions clearly intended to game the legal system and avoid trouble, such as, “How long does it take for you to get a search warrant?” Hooker emphasized that the police force is not out to get anyone and that they have discretion in making arrests. At the same time, though, they need to balance their discretion with their responsibility to enforce the law and keep the residents of Dewey Beach happy.

“I’ll be honest with you,” Hooker said. “The people who live in Dewey Beach, they hate you guys with a passion. They don’t want you there. They’re going to call every time you make a peep. But we understand that you guys are there to have a good time. I wouldn’t have a job if you and your friends didn’t come down there, so we understand that we have to coexist.”