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Local Laws in Ocean City Criminal Cases

Visiting or thinking of visiting Ocean City, Maryland? Here’s what you should know about local laws and ordinances that could impact your stay including noise violations, drug crimes, and DUI. To learn more about criminal violations in Ocean City or to discuss your case with an experienced criminal defense attorney in Ocean City call today and schedule a free consultation.

Enforcement of Local Laws in Ocean City, MD

Local laws and ordinances come into play in criminal cases because Ocean City definitely advertises itself as being a family resort. They are marketing to families from place like Pennsylvania and New Jersey, to come and stay and have their summer vacation down there.

That is the very big selling point for Ocean City, that it is a good family location that you can bring your children to. So, having said that, they will enforce some of their local ordinances more extremely than in other places. One example of this is  noise violations.  You can be stopped if you are driving down coastal highway and the music in your car can be heard beyond a certain distance.

That alone would be enough in Ocean City for a police officer to stop you. I have seen people stopped for spinning tires. These are all driving behaviors that they’re trying to prevent and clamp down. It’s a family resort and they want families to feel safe driving and being out on the streets.

Local Ordinances

There are other local laws and ordinances that get passed and because of what has happened in Ocean City over the past several years. For example, for a while, there was a great deal of synthetic marijuana or synthetic prescription drugs. Bath salts were also a big deal for a while.

As a result, Ocean City criminalized the possession or the sale of items like that well before the state of Maryland did.

The boardwalk is another large tourist attraction, so they definitely have some ordinances that they have passed trying to make sure that the boardwalk is maintaining a family environment. They clamped down on public intoxication.

Anybody that appears to be disorderly on the boardwalk, being too loud,  that will get the attention of the police officer very quickly.

The main issue with these laws is that their enforcement frequently escalates to criminal arrests. The most common example would be getting pulled over because of a noise ordinance violation, and then the driver ends up being charged with driving under the influence.

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