Georgia beach aims to disrupt Black students’ spring party after large crowds cause chaos in 2023

TYBEE ISLAND, Ga. (AP) — Thousands of black students expected this weekend for an annual spring party at Georgia’s largest public beach will be greeted by dozens of additional police and barricades closing neighborhood streets. Although the beach remains open, authorities are blocking access to nearby parking.

Tybee Island, east of Savannah, has been in the grips of the April beach party known as Orange Crush since students at Savannah State University, a historically black school, started it there more than 30 years ago. Residents regularly complained about loud music, trash littering the sand and revelers urinating in yards.

Those complaints turned to fear and outrage a year ago when a record crowd estimated at more than 100,000 people invaded the 3-mile island. That left a small police force scrambling to handle a flood of emergency calls reporting shootings, drug overdoses, traffic jams and fights.

Mayor Brian West, elected last fall by Tybee Island’s 3,100 residents, said the roadblocks and increased police aren’t just about limiting crowds. He hopes the crackdown will drive Orange Crush away for good.

“This has to stop. We can’t have this crowd anymore,” West said. “My goal is to end it.”

Critics say local officials are overreacting and appear to be targeting black visitors at a southern beach that only whites could use until 1963. They note that Tybee Island draws large crowds on July 4 and other weekends. -summer ends where visitors are largely white, as represent 92% of the island’s inhabitants.

“Our weekends are packed with people all season, but when Orange Crush comes, they close the parking lot, bring in extra police and act like they have to take matters into their own hands,” said Julia Pearce, the one of the few black residents of the island and leader of a group. called the Tybee MLK Human Rights Organization. She added: “They believe black people are criminals. »

During the week, workers placed metal barricades to block parking meters and residential streets along the main road parallel to the beach. Two large parking lots near a popular pier are closed. And Tybee Island’s roughly two dozen police officers will be supplemented by about 100 sheriff’s deputies, Georgia state troopers and other officers.

The security plans were influenced by tactics used last month to reduce crowds and violence during spring break in Miami Beach, which was observed by the Tybee Island police chief.

Officials insist they are acting to avoid a repeat of last year’s Orange Crush party, which they say became a public safety crisis with crowds at least twice their usual size.

“To me, it has nothing to do with race,” said West, who believes city officials didn’t take a stronger stance against Orange Crush before because they feared being called a racists. “We cannot let this be a reason to leave our citizens in danger and so it is not.”

Tybee Island police reported 26 total arrests during Orange Crush last year. The charges included armed robbery with a firearm, four counts of affray in public and five DUIs. Two officers reported being pelted with bottles and two women told police they had been beaten and had their purses stolen.

On a busy highway about a mile from the island, someone fired a gun at a car and injured one person. A white man was charged in the shooting, which authorities blamed on road rage.

Supporters and detractors of Orange Crush say it’s not the students who cause the worst problems.

Joshua Miller, a 22-year-old Savannah State University student who plans to attend this weekend, said he wouldn’t be surprised if the crackdown was at least partly racially motivated.

“I don’t know what they have in store for us,” Miller said. “I’m not going there with bad intentions. I’m just going there to have fun.

Savannah Mayor Van Johnson was one of the black students at Savannah State who helped start Orange Crush in 1988. The university dropped its involvement in the 1990s and Johnson said that over time, the celebration “had gone off the rails.” But he also told reporters he was concerned about the “overrepresentation of police” at the beach party.

At Nickie’s 1971 Bar & Grill near the beach, general manager Sean Ensign said many nearby stores and restaurants would close for Orange Crush, but his would remain open, selling takeout orders like last year. But with nearby parking spaces closed, Ensign said its profits could take a hit, “maybe a few thousand dollars.”

This is not the first time Tybee Island has targeted the Black Beach Party. In 2017, the city council banned alcohol and amplified music on the beach only during Orange Crush weekend. A discrimination complaint filed with the U.S. Department of Justice led city officials to sign a nonbinding agreement to impose uniform rules for large events.

West says Orange Crush is different because it’s promoted on social media by people who haven’t obtained permits. A new state law allows local governments to recoup public safety expenses from unlicensed event organizers.

In February, Britain’s Wigfall was denied a permit for space on the island for food trucks during Orange Crush. The mayor said Wigfall continued to promote events on the island.

Wigfall, 30, said he was promoting a concert this weekend in Savannah, but nothing on Tybee Island involving Orange Crush.

“I don’t control it,” Wigfall said. “No one controls when people go there.”