Belmar Special Officer Ryan Braswell Tackled Surfer Liam Mahoney Over a Beach Badge Before a $1,410 Diversion Deal Closed the Case
A twelve-dollar beach badge became a sand tackle on Belmar’s 19th Avenue beach on August 20, 2024. Bystander video shows Special Officer Ryan Braswell and a second officer driving surfer Liam Mahoney into the grit while a woman off-camera shouts that his badge is on his bag. The AEGIS Alliance kept the file on the Police Accountability desk because the ordinance was never the reason the clip left the Shore. The force was.
Mahoney, a Belmar native then living in California, had come out of the water in a wetsuit with a longboard. Belmar requires a badge seven days a week from Memorial Day through Labor Day under N.J.S.A. 40:61-22.20. Surfers have said for years that a metal pin ruins a wetsuit, so they clip the tag to a towel or a dry bag and walk it to the waterline. Witness Austin Downs wrote that Mahoney’s badge was on his gear when the officers dropped him. The woman on the tape is specific. “His badge is right here.” Then: “Get off of him.”
What the Body-Worn Camera Added and What It Did Not
Chief Tina Scotti posted Braswell’s body-worn camera on August 22, 2024, two days after the bystander video had already traveled. The department’s line was that the arrest was for refusing identification, not for a missing pin. On the recording Braswell explains the badge rule and asks for a name so he can write a summons. Scotti said Mahoney answered that he did not need a badge, declined to identify himself nine or ten times, and walked off after being told he was not free to leave. Officers then chase, knock the board away, and take him down. A strike lands on Mahoney’s back during the struggle.
The Asbury Park Press, ABC7 New York, and NBC New York ran both versions. The police cut makes Mahoney look argumentative. The phone video makes the takedown look like a pile-on over a $12 tag. Both things can be true at once. New Jersey municipal officers write badge summonses all summer. They do not usually put a forearm across a surfer’s neck to do it.
Charges filed in Belmar Municipal Court were disorderly conduct, obstruction, resisting arrest, and the badge ordinance. All three of the first group are disorderly persons offenses in New Jersey, not indictable crimes. Braswell is a Class II special officer, a seasonal title that carries a badge and a gun on the beach but is not a full-time municipal cop. Locals told surf magazines he had drawn complaints earlier that summer. The department said it would review the arrest under Attorney General use-of-force guidelines. No public internal-affairs finding naming Braswell has been posted.
The Shore Economy Behind a $12 Pin
Belmar is not an accident of geography. It is a badge town. The borough sells daily and seasonal tags and uses the revenue to staff lifeguards, rakes, and special officers who walk the sand looking for untagged chests. The legal hook is a 1930s statute that lets certain municipalities charge for beach access. Courts have upheld the scheme. That does not make a chokehold a billing method.
A Change.org petition to “decriminalize beach access” passed 1,400 signatures in a matter of days. The Surfrider Foundation of the Jersey Shore called the video disturbing and said badge rules should not be enforced with neck restraints. Stab and SURFER picked the clip up for a global surf audience that does not live in Monmouth County and does not care about Belmar’s recreation budget. That is how a local ordinance becomes a national use-of-force story. The internet does not watch the summons. It watches the sand.
Lawyer Cathleen Christie represented Mahoney. In May 2025, local coverage said he intended to fight the case at trial. That posture did not last through the next calendar page.
The June 2025 Plea and the Money Line
On or about June 3, 2025, Mahoney stood in Belmar Municipal Court and took a deal. NJ.com reported he pleaded guilty to the badge ordinance, paid $1,410 in fines and costs, and entered a one-year diversion that dismisses the disorderly, obstruction, and resisting counts if he stays clean. Patch and the Asbury Park Press described the same dollar figure. Court administrator Patty White confirmed the plea to reporters. Municipal court handling put the $1,410 against the package of offenses.
There is a reporting split worth flagging. Some write-ups said he pleaded only to the badge tag and used diversion for the rest. Others, including Patch citing the court administrator, said he entered pleas on the disorderly counts as well and still drew the diversion. The operational result is the same. The criminal-adjacent counts go away if he finishes the year. The badge violation is admitted. He paid. No officer was suspended in public. No civil complaint against the borough had been docketed in a way that newsrooms could find through September 2026.
That ending is the part police departments like and the part accountability desks should not sand down. A viral use-of-force clip can resolve as a municipal fine and a quiet probation form. The officer keeps the job. The town keeps the badge ordinance. The video stays online. Readers who came for justice theater get a receipt instead.
Why the Force, Not the Ordinance, Is the Story
New Jersey’s Attorney General has spent years rewriting use-of-force rules after high-profile deaths and after the 2020 protest wave. Special officers on seasonal beach duty sit in a gray band of that policy. They are armed. They are not always trained to the same hours as career cops. They are told to enforce quality-of-life rules that elected officials treat as revenue. When the subject is a wet surfer who will not hand over a name, the policy collision is predictable. Identify yourself or we take you down. The body-cam then becomes the department’s press release.
The AEGIS Alliance has watched this pattern on other tapes. An Inglewood driver punching a firefighter in Gardena is not the same facts. The handcuffing of an 8-year-old in Florida is not the same facts. The through line is the same: a low-level rule, a camera, a takedown, and an agency that asks the public to watch its own footage and call the force reasonable. Sometimes the subject later takes a deal because a municipal trial in the town that employs the officer is a long way to go for a principle.
Mahoney’s own words in court, as relayed through Christie, were that he did not have a visible badge when Braswell first walked up. That is a narrower statement than the bystander who said the tag was on the bag. Both can be true if the tag was in a sister’s tote ten feet away. A summons for an unpinned badge is how this should have ended. A forearm and a trip to the sand is how it ended on video.
What Was Never Posted
Belmar never released a named internal-affairs disposition. Monmouth County prosecutors did not announce an independent review that produced public discipline. Braswell’s name remains on the original complaint. The borough still sells badges. The 19th Avenue break is still a surf spot. Summer 2025 and summer 2026 came and went without a second viral clip from the same officer in the same town, which is not the same thing as a finding.
People who want a civil-rights lawsuit out of every viral arrest will not like this file. People who want every officer defended because a civilian talked back will not like it either. The record is small and specific. A special officer put a surfer on the sand over a badge dispute. The department said the crime was walking away. The surfer paid $1,410 and took a year of diversion. The officer was not publicly fired. That is the case as it stands.
Related force reporting from The AEGIS Alliance includes the Gardena firefighter crash linked above, the Ohio woman tasered at a football game, and the rest of the US News police desk. The AEGIS Alliance will leave the Belmar tape in the accountability stack because beach-town special officers still carry cuffs, and the next $12 argument will be filmed again.
