Carnivals canceled, boardwalks locked down — NJ can’t have nice things

I have been writing about this problem since Memorial Day weekend. I am going to keep writing about it because it keeps happening.

In the past week alone, across New Jersey, here is what occurred.

In Florence Township, the Roebling Carnival was canceled after fights broke out on opening night. Five people were arrested — four teens and a 20-year-old. One police officer was injured breaking up the fighting. Three days of the carnival were scrapped. Gone. A community event that families had been planning around, wiped out on the first night.

In Howell, a homeowner chased down a 12-year-old who kicked in his front door, pinned him to the ground and held him until police arrived. People are now debating whether that homeowner was a hero or whether he crossed a line. That we are having that debate at all says something.

In Woodbridge, the spring carnival at Woodbridge Center mall was canceled. Mall officials cited staffing issues, but the backdrop is hard to ignore — last year 300 unruly teens descended on the same carnival, running through the parking lot and the mall, and this year they were already requiring adults to accompany anyone under 18. The operator walked away.

At the Shore, Wildwood shut down a pop-up party before it could fully materialize, deploying the mounted police that worked so well over Memorial Day weekend. Seaside Heights enforced its 10 p.m. curfew again. Both towns now treating this as a weekly operational reality rather than a holiday exception.

And in Avalon — Avalon, one of the quietest and most affluent Shore towns on the coast — Circle Pizza posted on Facebook that they were closing their dining room early on May 23 because of unruly juveniles. A pizza place in Avalon. Closing early. Because of kids.

This is not a Shore problem or a city problem

That last detail is the one that matters most. Avalon is not Long Branch. It is not Wildwood. The kids causing problems there are not coming in on NJ Transit trains from Paterson. They are from beachside mansions. Their parents own those Shore houses or are renting them for amounts that would make your eyes water.

This problem has zero socioeconomic limitations. It is happening in Florence Township and Howell and Woodbridge and Seaside Heights and Wildwood and Avalon all in the same week. The common thread is not poverty or zip code or which train line kids took to get there. The common thread is unsupervised young people with no fear of consequences and a social media culture that rewards the chaos.

I said this after the Long Branch incident. I said it after the Pier Village curfew piece. I will say it again because our listeners keep saying it too: this comes down to parenting. Not exclusively, not simply, but fundamentally. Where are the parents?

SEE ALSO: From dirt bikes to Pier Village — NJ has a parent problem 

What our listeners say — and why none of it is simple

The calls and messages we get on this topic are consistent. Fine the parents heavily. Make the kids pick up trash on the side of the Parkway. Let them clean up the cities they are disrupting. Throw the parents in court alongside the kids.

I understand every one of those suggestions. And I think most of them have merit. The idea that a juvenile can destroy a community event, injure a police officer, close a pizza restaurant early, get a ride home and face no meaningful consequence — that is not a system that changes behavior. Consequences have to mean something or they mean nothing.

But I also know that real solutions are not simple. Some of these kids have parents who are working two jobs and genuinely cannot monitor a 14-year-old at 10 p.m. on a Saturday. Some of them have parents who simply do not care. Some of them have parents who would be horrified to know where their kids were and what they did. These are not the same problem with the same solution.

What we are left with

Police horses on boardwalks. Carnival operators walking away from contracts. A pizza shop closing its dining room because the alternative was worse. A homeowner pinning a 12-year-old to his own front lawn.

This is the current state of summer in New Jersey. Not everywhere. Not most of the time. But enough of the time and in enough places that it is shaping how families experience this state and whether business owners feel safe staying open.

Maybe affordability is not New Jersey's biggest problem right now. Maybe it is this.

The Shore is worth protecting. Community events are worth protecting. The ability to go to a carnival or eat a slice of pizza on a Friday night without something going wrong — that is worth protecting too.

We are all watching. And we are all waiting for someone to actually fix it.