Tourism

Ocean Shores Tourism is a very import part of our community's economic structure. We, at the police department, understand how important it is to show our continuous presence in visitor areas in order to provide information and assistance. Additionally, we must do everything we can to maintain a safe environment for our visitors and residents alike. As the below chart shows, our tourist population has grown over the past few years.

This equates to an average daily visitor population of 15,798. Adding this figure to our permanent population of nearly 5,000, Ocean Shores has a total average daily population of about 20,798 individuals. The increase in visitors during the last few years has brought some significant challenges in our delivery of services. Depending on the time of year, we devote between 50% to 80% of our public safety resources toward tourism. During certain times of the year, we must modify our work schedules in order to provide coverage for this demand while at the same time continuing to provide adequate preventative patrol and police response to our residents.

The bottom line is, even though our goals are difficult at times, we continue to do whatever is necessary to keep Ocean Shores a safe place to live, work, and play. We would like to ask that while shopping you try not to do what THIS person did!