Greater than 20 years in the past, Wayne Jones traveled to Daytona Seashore, then Florida’s spring break mecca, to not celebration however to check.
His bosses on the Miami Seashore Police Division, the place he was a younger officer, needed to know the way Daytona managed its famously rowdy crowds. Possibly Miami Seashore, which had its personal unruly scene yearly over Memorial Day weekend, might be taught a factor or two.
Officer Jones is now Chief Jones of the Miami Seashore Police. And Memorial Day is not the town’s primary concern: His most pressing process is bringing order to the weeks in March when Miami Seashore will get inundated with spring breakers, a monthlong slog that has turn into a thorn within the metropolis’s aspect. Final yr, the police made greater than 500 arrests and confiscated greater than 100 weapons over the spring break interval.
However Chief Jones has excessive expectations.
“That is going to be the perfect spring break ever,” he stated in a latest interview at his South Seashore workplace. “I can really feel it in my bones.”
It was a daring declaration in a metropolis the place fretting over spring break has turn into a year-round affair, with every new wave of politicians and directors vowing to be those who lastly get the season below management.
