More than two decades ago, Wayne Jones traveled to Daytona Beach, then Florida’s spring break mecca, not to party but to study.
His bosses at the Miami Beach Police Department, where he was a young officer, wanted to know how Daytona managed its famously rowdy crowds. Maybe Miami Beach, which had its own unruly scene every year over Memorial Day weekend, could learn a thing or two.
Officer Jones is now Chief Jones of the Miami Beach Police. And Memorial Day is no longer the city’s main concern: His most urgent task is bringing order to the weeks in March when Miami Beach gets inundated with spring breakers, a monthlong slog that has become a thorn in the city’s side. Last year, the police made more than 500 arrests and confiscated more than 100 guns over the spring break period.
But Chief Jones has high expectations.
“This is going to be the best spring break ever,” he said in a recent interview at his South Beach office. “I can feel it in my bones.”
It was a bold declaration in a city where fretting over spring break has become a year-round affair, with each new wave of politicians and administrators vowing to be the ones who finally get the season under control.
That would mean avoiding shootings like the ones that killed two people over a single weekend last year. But how far to go to secure the city as huge numbers of visitors arrive there in March has long been a matter of debate, with some tactics drawing charges of racism and lawsuits over civil rights and over-policing.
Some 25 years ago, Miami Beach became a destination for young Black visitors over the Memorial Day weekend, as clubs held hip-hop events that collectively became known as Urban Beach Week. After several violent incidents over the years, including some involving an excessive use of force by the police, the city in 2017 brought in a more family-friendly annual March event, the Hyundai Air & Sea Show. That shifted some Black tourism to spring break.
Since the beginning of the…
