Public Alcohol Consumption Enforcement Issues Surface

CAPE MAY – To aid local restaurants and bars economically hurt by three months of COVID-19 restrictions, Cape May City Council approved relaxation of its open consumption regulations. The change allowed open consumption of liquor on designated city streets, beaches and the Promenade, between 5-10 p.m. each day.
At the time of the council action to change the open consumption rules, Police Chief Anthony Marino expressed concern that enforcement would fall on his department in a summer when COVID-19 closed the Police Academy and left the department without its full complement of summer special officers. He predicted a greater level of public intoxication since the controls that a bar or similar establishment would impose on individuals would be absent.
At its June 16 meeting, council heard from one citizen complaining about the individuals buying “cocktails to go” and enjoying them on the city’s streets well before 5 p.m. The citizen hoped the police were going to strictly enforce the new regulations.
Yet, the nature of the emergency resolution that altered the public consumption rules was a compromise measure full of the enforcement problems compromise measures usually contain. Even if an individual enjoying lax public consumption rules did so between 5 p.m.-10 p.m., they must be careful to stay within over a dozen demarcated street blocks to observe city laws.
State changes that allow sealed container cocktails to go or that made it easier to have expanded liquor license premises add to what a visitor might see as an inconsistent set of rules too hard to understand and obey. The burden caused by confusion over what is and is not allowed falls, as it usually does, on municipal police departments.