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By Nikita Biryukov, NJ Monitor
Lawmakers in both chambers unanimously approved a bill Monday that would create new criminal charges in a bid to stem large and sudden pop-up parties ahead of the summer season, sending the measure to Gov. Phil Murphy’s desk.
The legislation would allow individuals to be jailed for inciting a public brawl, with other penalties for individuals who seek to conceal their identities or disrupt public gatherings.
“Why people want to meet up and brawl, I have no idea, but that’s what seems to be going on,” said bill sponsor Sen. Paul Moriarty (D-Gloucester). “We have some events that are coming up this spring and summer that, already, there’s been chatter online that police have picked up where people are sharing the announcements of these meetings or these events and saying, ‘We’re going to meet there, and we’re going to go at it.’”
Lawmakers’ push for new penalties comes after local officials last year griped about disruptive pop-up parties organized on social media, often outside the notice of local officials. The scale of those events, as well as the speed at which they can be organized, has overwhelmed authorities in some towns and spurred officials to beseech lawmakers for more tools to curtail them.
“We didn’t used to have regular public brawls or spontaneous public gatherings of mostly young people. With social media now, you can have 500 people show up and the word started to go out two days before. That can overwhelm police,” said Sen. Declan O’Scanlon (R-Monmouth), a Republican cosponsor.
Pop-up parties organized over social media last year drew hundreds of teenagers and young adults to boardwalks and beaches across the Jersey Shore, leading to temporary boardwalk closures in Wildwood, Ocean City, and Seaside Heights.
Officials there and elsewhere have said the young peoples’ conduct fell short of what could be charged under the state’s rioting statute but demanded stronger sanctions than those that could be meted out through a disorderly persons charge.
“You talk to local police, you talk to local officials, they want laws with teeth so they can deter this,” O’Scanlon said.
The newly created offense of inciting a public brawl would be a fourth-degree crime carrying up to 18 months behind bars and fines of up to $10,000 if the person charged moved to organize at least four others to engage in disorderly conduct with the aim of disrupting a public gathering.
Absent a preexisting public gathering, inciting a public brawl would be a disorderly persons charge carrying fines of not more than $1,000 and a prison term of up to six months.
The bill would make it a disorderly persons offense for an individual to willfully disrupt a public gathering or to attempt to conceal their identity while engaging in disorderly conduct.
Those changes take effect immediately, but lawmakers are weighing another bill that would provide training to state police so they could identify pop-up parties in their planning stages and make more state resources available to local officials to prevent these kinds of parties.
Moriarty said he expects that bill to advance when the Legislature next holds a voting session in May. In April, there is typically little legislative activity aside from budget hearings held in both chambers.
He was less certain about when a third bill that could extend criminal liability for unruly minors to their parents might advance, acknowledging that bill “may be a little bit more controversial.”
“It shouldn’t be an everyday occurrence. There should be some really meaty facts that show they should have done something or known something, but I think the appetite is there to say parents need to watch what their kids are doing,” Moriarty said.
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