Ocean City's line in the sand Underage: Police are out in force this summer in a crackdown on drug use and drinking by young revelers.

OCEAN CITY -- It doesn't all go down as smoothly as it did that night last summer.

Back then, Ronnie Townsend, a slightly nerdy, crew-cut 26-year-old in a flannel shirt and baseball cap, strolled through the door to a 12-keg party in a beach house.

He dredged a dirty plastic cup from the sink and tapped himself a brew. Checking out the young faces, he knew he'd come to the right place. He called a few friends.

They came quickly: five squad cars from the Ocean City Police Department. The party erupted as teen-agers scrambled for the doors. Eight officers waded through the mayhem, plastering everyone they could catch with tickets of up to $500 for underage drinking; and handcuffing, jailing and fingerprinting the party's hosts for serving alcohol to minors.

Officer Townsend's acting performance in June 1996 was one of the sneakier victories in this resort town's two-year undercover war on underage drinkers.

Although this magnet for 18-year-olds celebrating graduation has launched campaigns before to stop illegal drinking, six alcohol-related deaths in 1995 inspired an escalation in police tactics, city officials said.

In one of these tragedies, a 21-year-old who had been drinking fell to his death while trying to perform a handstand on a 12th-story condominium balcony. In another, a woman was crushed trying to leap between the moving cars of a tram on the boardwalk.

Trying to keep the madness to a minimum this year, as many as 16 undercover officers have been prowling the streets on busy Saturday nights, said Sgt. Ed O'Brien, night-shift supervisor in the old town district. No regular undercover patrols existed three years ago.

Police Chief David C. Massey said the number of alcohol citations issued by his department this summer may grow to 3,500 -- more than eight times the 400 written in 1995.

"We have stepped up our enforcement efforts, and the end result is that we have a quieter community, with no alcohol-related deaths last year and so far none this summer," said the chief.

"We think we are preventing not only nuisance crimes, but also serious crimes like date rape."

Although stings of parties like the one conducted by Townsend are rare, undercover officers routinely lurk in liquor store parking lots, watching for handoffs to minors, police officials said.

And they stroll the boardwalk in beach-bum drag, sniffing for joints, leaning toward young people to overhear gossip of parties, and scanning hands for suspicious beverages.

All this intelligence-gathering is in addition to the snooping by a growing number of private security guards hired by hotels, according to hotel managers.

Sometimes these are off-duty officers from Western Maryland making extra bucks while on vacation. On the pretext of investigating "fire-code violations," they sometimes root through rooms for alcohol and marijuana, according to hotel managers and police.

A plainclothes officer working security at the Pointe on the Bay Apartments on Philadelphia Avenue searched a unit June 22 rented by eight teen-agers from Springfield, Va., to find hints of a serious graduation party: four cases of beer, 4 ounces of cocaine, a bag of hashish, two cases of nitrous oxide, two bongs, 2 liters of vodka, a liter of rum and a "beer bong" made from a funnel and a clear plastic tube, according to police and hotel manager Wilson Reynolds of East Coast Management.

Justin Knott, an 18-year-old charged with possession of alcohol during the raid, watched glumly with his hands in pockets as a drug-sniffing dog marked Knott's rite of passage.

"This was our graduation," he said meekly. "This was our night. I don't know where the cocaine came from."

Many local business owners praise the covert war, saying it has cut down on the mayhem that threatened to drive families from this 9-mile paved peninsula of beachside motels.

But there is also this irony: Minors are a major source of money here. This is especially true at the start of summer, with the annual cicadalike swarming of graduation-buzzed "June bugs."

Some hotels charge teens 50 percent more than adults, requiring young people to pay security deposits of up to $100 per head and demanding money up front for a full week -- sometimes $1,000 or more. When managers evict for partying, some keep not only the deposit but the remaining rent, according to hotel managers.

Dan LeMay, manager of the Sandyhill Motel on 18th Street, said on a busy Saturday recently: "This part of the year wouldn't be that financially strong if it wasn't for the kids. Most places would be looking at a 50 percent occupancy rate without them."

Some young tourists claim their rights are being forgotten in the city's zeal to polish its image.