Police: Hundreds Involved In Memorial Day Fight In Long Beach
LONG BEACH, N.Y. (CBSNewYork/AP) -- A beach melee involving hundreds of people spilled out onto the streets and a nearby bus depot forcing the Long Beach police department to call in for backup from other units.
Police said the trouble started when hordes of young people, who had been waiting on the boardwalk for hours to get onto the beach for free after 6 p.m., clashed with people who were trying to leave the beach.
Long Beach has a $12 entrance fee in place for out-of-towners.
"We had hundreds of kids congesting the boardwalk in the middle of town and they were from different towns from the South Shore and some of them might have rivalries," Police Inspector Jack Radin told 1010 WINS.
According to reports, 11 Nassau police cars and two Metropolitan Transportation Authority police units assisted with the crowd control on Monday evening.
Police say a series of fights erupted on the beach just before it closed at 6 p.m. and continued for several hours.
Eventually, police tried to get the kids off the boardwalk and back onto mass transit which was operating on a holiday schedule.
"We were only going to get one bus through every hour and those buses have a capacity of about 70 and we're talking upwards of 500 to 700 kids that were out of town trying to use mass transit to get back home," Radin said.
The situation was brought under control by 9 p.m.
There was one arrest. No injuries were reported.
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