Captain of Ocean City Beach Patrol Will Allow Females to Go Topless
by
Wcbm
OCEAN CITY, Md. – Ocean City Beach Patrol employees have been ordered not to approach women who sunbathe topless on Ocean City’s beaches.
In a memo sent out to all Beach Patrol employees on Tuesday, Captain Butch Arbin said the policy that has been in effect since May 20 is to document complaints of toplessness on a minor incident form but not to go up to the topless women, even if beach goers request it.
Arbin tells WBOC there was a specific incident that prompted the decree, which he says differs from the Ocean City Beach Patrol’s past policy on female toplessness.
“For the 44 years I’ve been guarding the beach in Ocean City, when we’d see people topless on the beach we would just tell them, ‘Hey, you can’t do that,’” Arbin said. “But since this formal request from someone (Chelsea Covington, a topless advocate from the Eastern Shore), and since the Maryland Attorney General’s Office hasn’t issued their opinion on it, we don’t feel like we can tell people not to sunbathe topless.”
