Sam Amico
Miami Beach is putting the brakes on Spring Break. At least, officials are aiming to curtail some of the chaos that ensues annually when college students embark on the area.
Videos by Rare
“This weekend and next weekend are our largest, we’ve put in robust measures this year, more than we’ve ever done, policy-wise, and also the law enforcement presence is going to be very large,” said Miami Beach Mayor Steven Meiner, via CBS News. “Interestingly, here in Miami Beach, it’s uniformly appreciated and we have the buy-in from everyone — our commission, our police chief, our businesses, our residents. Here it’s quite popular.”
In other words, Miami Beach is aiming to keep things under control while, of course still making a profit from the influx of people expected over the next week or so.
But officials are indeed serious about crowd control and keeping things from becoming a free-for-all. Already, police have made dozens of arrests.
“Well, this is a busy time of year generally for us. Our hotels are full, we’re actually a popular tourist destination all year round, certainly March is a big part of that,” Meiner said. “I mean, there’s always a level of crime in our city, but we didn’t see anything really out of the ordinary. So far, everything’s pretty common and so far, so good.”
More than 40 state troopers are assisting in crowd-control efforts.
“It’s a huge help and not only the state, but we have county help, which are appreciative of that, some other sister cities,” Meiner said. “But yeah, this is the first time really we’ve gotten this type of help from the state proactively. The state has been helpful in the past when we’ve had some issues and we’ve had to go into a sort of emergency mode.
“But here, we’re going to have 45 troopers on our streets this weekend, next weekend, proactively to make sure we don’t have any issues at the outset.”
