In the thick of the shore tourism season, resorts such as the Wildwoods and Ocean City, Maryland, compete for the hearts and dollars of mid-Atlantic residents contemplating summer vacations. After Labor Day, the advertising budgets get cut back and shore towns and businesses hope for the best they can get on so-called “shoulder” weekends.
They’re more willing to accept big, privately run outdoor events and conventions. The more honky-tonk destinations aren’t too picky about who shows up. But there’s one group that it seems nobody wants: the people who run an impromptu car racing event known as H2oi, H20i or H2022.
Once limited to Maryland’s Ocean City, H2oi tended to get out of hand so quickly that city officials took steps to try to eject the street racers, their drunken fans and the noise and pollution from revving cars and burning, screeching tires. So, last weekend, the pop-up spectacle ended up right in Wildwood over Saturday night, with more than 500 vehicles. When the mayhem was all over, two people were dead from related causes, and several others were injured.
The Baltimore Sun states that “H2…” meet-ups have gone on in Ocean City in some form since the late 1990s. About the 2019 version, the paper reported that the mayor said the town was “under siege” and that a child and an adult were struck by one car. So, when the rally took place again in 2020, city police responded with 3,500 citations. They towed or impounded over 350 vehicles.
The somewhat elusive organizers — although they have a website —apparently got the unwelcoming message. It’s not clear if the Wildwood version last weekend represented a change in venue for the official/unofficial event, or was an offshoot coordinated by a splinter group.
The preponderance of social media as the main contact point for invitees makes it difficult for law enforcement to stay ahead of potential trouble in advance. It should be observed, though, that the incidence of violent, destructive or disruptive “flash mobs” went down once police departments began monitoring relevant web pages and putting real effort into deciphering code words used by event facilitators.
Wildwood officials have suggested they were aware of the H2oi rally before it took place, but say they didn’t know in advance that it would be so big and unruly. Police have not disclosed details of their pre-event preparedness, but admitted that law enforcement was outnumbered, even when additional local departments and the State Police were called in to assist. Wildwood, they insist, has sufficiently prepared in the past for festivals and events attracting over 30,000 people, so it’s not a problem to marshal the required resources.
It’s appropriate that city commission members have questioned Mayor Pete Byron and Police Chief Robert Regalbuto about preparedness issues. H2oi is a reason for a gut check to see if any policies and procedures can be improved.
It’s a good start that Byron has consulted Ocean City, Maryland, Mayor Richard Mehan, who has offered Wildwood copies of the ordinances his city adopted to discourage H2oi revelers from ever coming back. We don’t know which measures would be legal in New Jersey, but it stands to reason that potential loss of their expensively souped up cars would hurt the boy racers and the midlife-crisis motorheads where it matters the most. And, where the vehicles don’t show up, the spectators won’t follow.
Knowing what we do about the propensity of illegal street racing to quickly relocate to where the police aren’t watching, other Jersey Shore towns should buff up their own ordinances and devote more attention to social media monitoring. In Wildwood, the H2oi folks found a weak spot in defenses, and took advantage of it.
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