All hell broke loose on a New Jersey beach when hundreds of high schoolers started brawling

Instagram/Garret Cantor

Each year, at the beginning of the summer season, high schoolers flood to the beaches. They’re fresh out of school and though they’re not always looking for trouble, sometimes trouble finds them. Over Memorial Day weekend, the town of Margate in New Jersey turned into a sandy battlefield when hundreds of youths squared off.

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The police officers’ busy weekend began on Saturday on the beach when fights broke out and police were called to quell the violence that had erupted. One beach-goer managed to capture part of the scuffle on his phone, as police threw a juvenile to the ground — to the “ooohs” of the crowd. He uploaded the clip to Instagram with the caption “gotta love beach days.” According to Philly.com, the incidents on the beach resulted in three arrests.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BUpJ-KpAFAF/?taken-by=garrett_cantor

But the teens were just warming up. Later that same night, they gathered en masse by a Wawa convenience store and more chaos ensued. Fights broke out sporadically, and throughout Saturday evening, there were 12 arrests of individuals under the age of 20. Margate Police Captain Ken Bergeron noted that “there’s not one of them from Margate […] there were so many people fighting, we had to get help from Ventnor and Longport.”

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Police have found it very difficult to enforce curfews and say that the issues are relatively new within the past few years. They say they’ve also considered posting an officer at the Wawa and other areas where youths frequently congregate but they are struggling. Locals interviewed by Philly.com agreed that the issues seem to be isolated to weekends like Memorial Day when the population swells with teenagers.

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