Montgomery County is conducting a multi-department collaboration to respond to illegal commercial house parties when they occur in the county, an official with the Office of the County Executive said Wednesday.
“We have a multi-department collaboration that is ongoing,” including monitoring for notice of such parties, Assistant Chief Administrative Officer Earl Stoddard explained Wednesday during County Executive Marc Elrich’s weekly news briefing. “We can see where there are dates and times listed and you obviously have to know the super-secret handshake to be able to get tickets, so we’re sort of monitoring when those events are going to be and we’re going to have teams prepared to respond to them should they emerge in Montgomery County.”
The county collaboration is in response to recent reported parties in neighborhoods, including a raucous “Wet Dreams” pool party at a Potomac home in late May that drew about 1,000 people, according to local officials. Advertised on social media and Eventbrite as a “mansion pool party,” attendees were able to purchase cabanas with liquor bottle service and hookah for between $1,000 and $2,000, depending on the number of people in their group and choice of liquor.
The county collaboration includes state agencies because “the state alcohol, tobacco and cannabis administration does control the unlicensed distribution of alcohol, for example, at these house parties,” Stoddard said.
County departments involved in the collaboration include permitting services for commercial activity, environmental protection for noise violations, health and human services for unlicensed food distribution and also public safety agencies, he said.
Stoddard noted that most of the infractions that may occur at such events are civil, not criminal, in nature.
“We see in the movies: Police go in and break up college parties all the time. That’s not the way it works with some of these civil citations,” he said. “[Civil citations are] issued and they’ll be issued in real time or immediately thereafter, but going in and breaking up activity on a private property is limited to criminal activity.”
He said some of the houses where parties have been held in the county are “repeat offenders” and “those are the houses that obviously we’re focused a lot on moving forward.”