OCEAN CITY, Md. -- Police officers will be riding up and down the beach on all-terrain-vehicles this summer. The ATV's will help officers enforce rules on the beach and assist with missing kids.
"This is just an opportunity for us to expand our patrol operations, put some officers on ATV's, assist beach patrol with some of the enforcements of municipal ordinances," said Lieutenant Dennis Eade.
One of the key words Eade mentioned is 'assist'. Ocean City Beach Patrol Captain Butch Arbin tells us his lifeguards will still handle a lot of the interactions between beachgoers.
The officers on ATV's will just be an extra set of eyes and ears, which will help lifeguards keep their eyes on the surf, rather than what's going on behind them.
"We do get a lot of visitors from outside the area, the town of Ocean City, and a lot of people don't know the ordinances," said Lieutenant Joe Lotito. "It's going to be education in the beginning until we need to use enforcement action."
Up to three ATV's will be seen on the beach during the day, and they will mirror the beach patrol's hours of 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
The new gadgets will also allow law enforcement to help out if a child goes missing.
"We know that the beach patrol is already hustling to locate that missing child," said Eade. "Adding police officers on ATV's, that's just more eyes out there looking for this child and hopefully returning them to their parents even sooner."
According to OCBP, last year 384 kids went missing. Arbin said that is a significantly lower number than prior years, where over 1,000 kids would go missing each season.
Arbin said they have made an effort through social media and weekly newspapers telling parents to introduce their kids to lifeguards and show them landmarks.
While those measures have helped, a brand-new program called "Find-A-Kid" is taking child safety one step further.
"Really the whole purpose of the program is to give the beach patrol and the police department an extra layer of 'where's this kid from' and how do we reconnect them or reunite them with their parent," said Susan Jones, Executive Director of the Hotel Motel Restaurant Association.
The program allows vacationers to outfit their little ones with a wristband corresponding to the hotel they're staying at. So far, 30 hotels have signed up.