Locked Beach Gates In Seaside Heights 'A Screw-Up', Mayor Says

SEASIDE HEIGHTS, NJ — When a Seaside Heights police officer locked beach gates at 6 p.m. on Sunday, it shouldn't have happened, Mayor Anthony Vaz says.

"It was a screw-up," Vaz said Tuesday morning in phone conversation with Patch. "It shouldn't have happened."

The locking was captured by Gregory Andrus, a local photographer and owner of the Facebook page Portraits of the Jersey Shore, who shared photos shortly after it happened Sunday evening.

The incident sparked another round in the ongoing debate over beach access, with more than 1,500 comments on Andrus's first post and a follow-up on Monday.

The locking angered both local residents and those who visit Seaside Heights.

"I live here two blocks from the boardwalk. I moved here and pay taxes here so that I can walk up onto the sand whenever I want, not so that I could get in my car and drive to other towns to enjoy a 15-minute stroll along the water," Mary Epps said in a comment Andrus highlighted.

Andrus said police officers told him the gates would be closed at 6 p.m. daily when school lets out but Vaz said that will not happen.

The town does lock them later in the evening, after dark, Vaz said. Access does remain available for surf fishing and for surfers, he said.

Beach access — and the issue of keeping people out of the water when lifeguards aren't present — has been a hot topic for the last several years, the result of multiple drownings and rescues of people who went into the ocean in spite of warnings about the dangers of swimming when lifeguards aren't present.

In September 2023, Jenkinson's locked the access gates on its section of the boardwalk in Point Pleasant Beach after a lawsuit was filed over the death of a man who drowned in 2020 when he went in the ocean during the offseason.

The state Department of Environmental Protection ultimately ordered Jenkinson's to remove the locks, and the lawsuit against the company — which claimed Jenkinson's hadn't done enough to warn people about the dangers — was thrown out.

Ocean Grove has been fighting an ongoing battle with the NJDEP over its rule barring access to its beach before noon on Sundays, a rule rooted in the community's religious background. The Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association, a Methodist organization, has controlled access to a small portion of beach dating back to 1870.

The New Jersey Attorney General's office has said in recent years that towns can shut down beach access when ocean conditions are dangerous, to curtail some of the issues with people swimming and putting themselves and first responders in danger.

Last August Seaside Heights did just that, closing the beach early to keep people out of harm's way.

But Sunday was not a bad weather day, it was just an error, Vaz said.

"It was a mistake," Vaz said. "By the time we heard about it it was already done. All we can do is apologize."