With violence on the rise, one Florida city might put an end to spring break
In an effort to curb violence, the tourism council in Bay County, Florida, voted Tuesday to spend more money on security during spring break — but some local residents say that even though visitors inject millions of dollars into the economy, they would be happy if revelers found a new place to go wild.
The population of Panama City Beach swells every spring break, from 12,000 full-time residents to 250,000, mostly college students. "When it hits, you literally go from a crawl to 100 miles-an-hour overnight," Sparky Sparkman, owner of the Spinnaker bar, told CBS News. "Therein lies the problem of spring break."
The Bay County Sheriff's Department has had to set up a mobile booking center, dubbed the Spring Break Jail, in order to handle the extra arrests. So far this year, there have been 1,100 arrests, triple last year's number, most of them related to drinking and drugs. Violent crimes, like sexual assaults, are also up from last year, and an apparent gang rape of an unconscious 19-year-old was caught on cell phone video. The city has temporarily banned drinking on the beach in an attempt to keep things somewhat under control, and in May, they will vote on whether the ban should become permanent; if it passes, it's likely that spring breakers will go elsewhere next year, which is fine by many. "We're in chaos right now," says resident Wes Pittman. "This spring break and the way it has evolved over the last couple years has become a blight on the entire community."
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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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