Leah Fabel, The Examiner
2008-06-13 07:00:00.0
Current rank: Not ranked

WASHINGTON -

Battle-weary police forces along the Delmarva shoreline are bracing today for the peak of beach week, when as many as 150,000 high school graduates from around the Washington area descend on seaside towns in droves, without parents, and bearing the threat of mess and mayhem.

Already this week in Ocean City, Md., nearly 100 people have been arrested for raucous behavior — everything from a fight on the boardwalk drawing 500 onlookers to 27 drug arrests in one night alone.

In nearby Dewey Beach, Del., the residents of an entire house were arrested earlier in the week — 25 students on charges of underage drinking and possession of drug paraphernalia.

“Finally saw my first gas-mask water bong,” said Cliff Dempsey, a Dewey Beach police sergeant, describing a seized military-style gas mask with a plastic tube and bowl attached for smoking marijuana.

Dempsey expected about 3,500 students in Dewey Beach each week through the third week in June, and he said complaints to the police go up by at least one third.

Groups on Facebook, the popular social networking site, form to preserve the memories: “House of Crunk on Rodney Ave.,” which includes graduates of Montgomery County’s Seneca Valley and Walter Johnson high schools, shares memories and photos from wild parties at a rented home only blocks from the police station.

“Our officers love Facebook, too,” Sgt. Dempsey said, adding he was familiar with the property.

Throughout the year, officials work to dampen the season’s deadly possibilities. Dempsey hosts safety presentations for Montgomery County’s three Bethesda high schools; Ocean City organizes Play it Safe events with food and free transportation for drug- and alcohol-free graduates. So far, 13,000 have registered, about 10 percent of the expected teens.

At home, nervous parents like Montgomery County school board member Pat O’Neill await their children’s safe return. “My daughters are 10 years apart in age and in that time this whole thing has escalated,” she said, adding that when she graduated from Bethesda’s Walter Johnson High School in 1968, there was no beach week.

“It was not as indulgent a time,” O’Neill said.

The anxieties, however, seem to skip the generation taking part in the festivities.

“I’m gonna hang out with friends, play in the water, just hang out and have a good time,” said Churchill graduate Michael Futterman, adding drugs and alcohol aren’t his thing.

“It’s the type of thing that sounds worse in print than it is in actuality,” said Carl Erlich, a Whitman graduate and beach week survivor currently studying economics at Harvard. “Beach week is as the rest of your life is — it’s who you surround yourself with, and what your morals are. ... No one goes in an angel and comes out a terrible person.”

lfabel@dcexaminer.com