SAVANNAH, Ga. () — Public safety officers and other personnel held a press conference today to talk about their safety plans for the highly anticipated event, Orange Crush.
“We are here to maintain public safety and keep everybody safe who’s traveling to and from the island. That’s our main goal,” Tiffany Hayes Tybee Chief of Police said.
There will be 150 officers on the island, a large increase from the 23-25 officers the island is used to having. On top of increased police presence, there will also be checkpoints throughout the islands to make sure everyone has proper credentials. It will all start the Friday before the event and end that Sunday.
“There will be road safety checkpoints set up. So, everyone traveling the roadway needs to be prepared for that. It’s going to cause a delay in traffic, and they need to be prepared to show their credentials to travel along the roadways to the officers if asked,” Hayes said.
The roadway will be split again like last year, creating space for emergency personnel, and parking will only be allowed on the northside of the island. Mayor Brian West said this will prevent large crowds from convening together, causing chaos.
“We have to keep the traffic moving on the south end or else it creates a backup that goes off about the county. So that’s a critical part of what made the event a success in the past also. In 23, it was literally riotous in the parking lots, and it was unsafe. One of our policemen got hit in the head with a glass bottle. There were, you know, people jumping on cars and stomping on cars and just all kinds of stuff. There were either guns going off or fireworks. It sounded like guns going off. So, it was just really, really a bad situation that we can’t allow to happen again here,” West said.
Despite backlash online from residents and other Savannah natives, West said the safety precautions are just that, and nothing is race motivated.
“We’re just doing what we’ve learned works for this particular event. You know? It doesn’t matter, you know, racially who who’s part of that crowd is. It’s the activities that are going on in the crowd that we’re trying to protect,” West said.
This was the first out of two press conferences the city will hold. The next will be catered towards residents, letting them know when their roads and streets will be blocked off, and also how traffic will move that Easter weekend.