Flynn Slams Dems on Fox & Friends After Override Meltdown
May 28, 2025
TRENTON, N.J. – New Jersey residents are sick of Democrats’ soft-on-crime policies that allow for the violence experienced at the Jersey Shore this Memorial Day weekend, Assemblywoman Vicky Flynn says.
The assemblywoman sat with Fox & Friends Lawrence B. Jones Wednesday morning to discuss how seven years under Gov. Phil Murphy has made the state more dangerous.
She shared that last Thursday she argued that the Assembly should override Gov. Phil Murphy’s conditional veto of a bill that passed unanimously in both the Senate and Assembly, which would give law enforcement stronger tools to quash pop-up parties and brawls that have plagued shore towns for several summers. Instead, Democrats tabled her motion and passed the bill with Murphy’s amendments, something Flynn said not only guts the bill but potentially creates First Amendment issues.
“We’ve got to give law enforcement the tools to investigate these crimes, to stop them from happening,” Flynn (R-Monmouth) said. “And the Trenton Democrats decided to [table] my attempt to override the veto and, here we are, we had a weekend of chaos which I sadly predicted would happen. And it wasn’t just at the shore. It’s at our malls now, and that’s a big problem.”
Even with a 10 p.m. curfew for minors and increased police presence, violence erupted in Seaside Heights over the weekend, with authorities arresting 73 people, including 21 juveniles. A 21-year-old Beachwood man was also charged with possession of a firearm after police responded to a fight at Grant and Ocean Terrace avenues. Three separate stabbings within a block of the famed boardwalk led to its closure just after midnight Monday.
Flynn had hoped the bipartisan bill (S3507/A4652) would have been signed into law and in force by Memorial Day weekend. The bill passed in the Legislature would make inciting a public brawl a fourth-degree crime, punishable by up to 18 months in prison and a fine of up to $10,000. Penalties for disorderly persons offenses would increase to six months in prison and fines up to $1,000. Any attempt to conceal one’s identity to avoid apprehension or hinder prosecution would also be a disorderly persons offense.
Instead, policies coming out of Trenton make law enforcements’ jobs more difficult.
“Over the last seven years there have been numerous policies adopted and lack of enforcement that prevent law enforcement from taking action to prevent what’s going on and what you’re seeing at the shore. We have laws that prevented law enforcement from engaging with minors who might be caught drinking alcohol or smoking pot,” Flynn said. “Just because of these left-leaning type policies to allow these types of behaviors. [Republicans] have taken a lot of action to reverse those policies.”
Still, Flynn said the public is tiring of scenes that played out in Seaside Heights over the weekend, and at Menlo Park Mall on May 17, where more than 300 teens and young adults, many from outside Edison, swarmed and brawled, leading to seven arrests.
“The soft-on-crime policies of our state have led to what we’re seeing right now at our boardwalks,” Flynn said. “…They are sick and tired of their state being overrun by soft-on-crime type policies.”
