Gavin Knupp was a 14-year-old boy tragically killed in a hit-and-run on July 11, 2022, on Gray's Corner Road in Berlin, Maryland. As of today, over five months later, no arrests have been made.

However, according to a Facebook page seeking Justice for Gavin: "On the early morning hours of Sunday, July 17, 2022, a search warrant was issued and the vehicle was located in the garage of a home on the 9400 block of Lake View Drive in the Ocean Reef community in Berlin, MD (to which it is registered) and taken into police custody."

Over 150 years ago British statesman William E. Gladstone said, "Justice delayed, is justice denied." Martin Luther King wrote from his jail cell in Birmingham, "Justice too long delayed is justice denied." 

The Justice for Gavin Facebook page now has nearly 20,000 members. It also provides the following: "Information related to the Gavin Knupp Foundation, donations, related events, and merchandise can be found at www.doitforgavin.com."

Gavin Knupp lived with his mother Tiffany in Ocean Pines for over a year. Those who knew Gavin say: "He enjoyed everything outdoors. Fishing, surfing, skateboarding, hunting, and riding anything with wheels." Tiffany Knupp approached OPA, hoping to see the skateboard park named in memory of Gavin. OPA countered with an offer of a yearly award in memory of Gavin. Things did not go well. Tiffany Knupp and her supporters were more or less outraged at the OPA Board of Directors - to put it mildly.

Many Knupp supporters called for a boycott of all Ocean Pines food and beverage operations, based on management of those facilities by Matt Ortt Companies and one now-resigned partner's supposed failure to be as open about his knowledge of the hit-and-run as the Gavin Knupp supporters believe he should be. Others say those seeking justice should focus their efforts on law enforcement. OPA and members of the Board of Directors faced disgusting slurs on Facebook. OPA was called a criminal enterprise. Protests took place at Ortt restaurants outside Ocean Pines.

OPA Director Rick Farr said he has letters from parents of children who have been bullied at school because they work at Ocean Pines Association restaurants.

Based on threats emanating from a few individuals seeking "Justice For Gavin," the Ocean Pines Association Board of Directors decided anyone attending board meetings must now present a property owner identification card. While only allowing OPA association members to attend board meetings is not entirely unreasonable, what is unreasonable is the process the board chose to enforce their member-only mandate, the first for OPA in its over 50-year history.

Those attending board meetings are now met by a uniformed, armed, police officer who will check their identification. Papers, Please. This is an insult to the officers of the Ocean Pines Police Department. These officers are sworn to enforce federal, state, and local laws. Crowd control? Safety issues? Certainly. However, police officers are not administrative assistants for a homeowners association. OPA has no law-making authority. OPA governing documents are not laws.

One association member wrote, "Ocean Pines Police Department checking IDs is, in my opinion, outside of the statutory scope and authority of the department. It should be done by Association personnel. Having a police presence all the time or some of the time, for public safety reasons, is a different matter."

OPA's annual membership meeting requires identification for purposes of establishing a quorum and the right to vote on any association business. Members of the Election Committee do the checking, not the police.

Another interesting aspect of this is the OPA photo IDs do not even indicate if the holder is an association member unless the card is scanned. There was no scanner in use at the last regular board meeting.

At that meeting, at least one association member was allowed to enter without papers. So too was a reporter for an Ocean City newspaper. The reporter is not an association member.