NORTH MYRTLE BEACH, SC (WBTW) – North Myrtle Beach police say the number of arrests were down last Memorial Day Weekend.
The North Myrtle Beach Department of Public Safety sent News13 a timeline of incident reports of every Memorial Day Weekend for the last 10 years.
Authorities made 39 arrests last weekend. That’s the lowest the department has seen since 2012.
Compared to last year, tickets and traffic accidents were nearly cut in half. Despite the decrease in incident reports, Pat Dowling communications officer for North Myrtle Beach, says officers were still busy.
“Nobody’s saying the weekend was easy for them,” Dowling explains. “We did have incidents, but we were able to control them and make them non-incidents and that takes a lot of work. They are very proactive.”
Bikers who would usually come into town for Atlantic Beach Bike Festival steered clear last weekend. The festival was postponed to September due to the coronavirus outbreak.
For the first time in 10 years, no motorcycle accidents were reported in North Myrtle Beach. Dowling believes postponing the festival is the reason behind the decrease in this year’s incident reports.
“The reason the figures were probably down is because the lack of motorcycles and interaction between motorcycles and cars and frustrations boiling over,” Dowling says. “So, when you have that off your roads it makes it a little easier to keep traffic flowing.”
Additional police units were called to assist with public safety last weekend. About 100 warnings were given, but Dowling says he’s proud of how the department prevented those warning from escalating.