MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. (WBTW) – If you made a trip to the beach this week, you might have noticed some new signs installed at several public beach access entrances.
The new signs at public beach accesses encourage drivers to protect their belongings. It alerts beach goers to lock their vehicles, to secure their belongings so that they aren’t in plain sight and to report any suspicious activity.
Myrtle Beach Officers came up with the new initiative after noticing an increase in break-ins at the beach access points.
“We’re concentrating on the beach accesses predominately because people come to the beach and they’ll bring their iPads and their cell phones, wallets and laptops. They don’t have anywhere to put them so they’ll leave them in the car and we generally find them in the seat or plain view and so when people walk by it becomes an easy target for them to break the windows and steal the merchandise,” Lt. Joey Crosby said.
The signs say to lock your vehicle, secure items from view and report all suspicious activity to Myrtle Beach Police Department at 843-918-1382. For those who live along the beach, the new signs are positive things.
“I do think that they’ll help. I think people are really concerned about hitting the beach like everyone else in this area is and they want to make it quick, convenient and have a really good time. So maybe they’re not thinking about the small stuff and the small stuff is really what matters,” Lisa Sample said.
But city leaders won’t stop with just signs in their crime prevention efforts along the Boulevard.
“As the summer season starts we do have officers that are monitoring the beach accessed heavily during the course of the day because again that’s one of the areas our city is heavily populated and we see a lot of attention in that area. In addition to the officers we’re also utilizing our cameras as well now,” Crosby said.
MBPD ordered 80 of the signs at a cost of $1500 and a local Myrtle Beach police officer designed the signs. They will install them in phases.
