The city of Miami Beach is claiming success in its “Spring Break Up” campaign after a normally uproarious weekend drew to a close with crowds that seemed not altogether different from the typical busy weekend. The campaign, which included crowd-dissuading measures such as increased parking fees and a midnight curfew starting on Friday, seems to have deflected the unmanageable crowds of past years.
The weekend saw fewer cars on the road than the city would normally expect for a Spring Break weekend, although there were many more police present than normal. According to figures that police spokesperson Christopher Bess shared with the Miami Herald, officers have made around 265 arrests since the beginning of Spring Break, mostly due to disorderly conduct by partiers. Four of the arrests, however, were in relation to the midnight curfew.
In the previous year, there were 500 arrests made, and two deadly shootings occurred.
The “Spring Break Up” campaign has not been popular with everyone in Miami Beach. Three nightclubs on South Beach filed a lawsuit on Friday in an attempt to have the curfew overturned. The nightclubs M2, Mynt Lounge, and Exchange worked together on the lawsuit. Michael Witt, the operator of M2, told CBS News Miami that the curfew could cost the club “in lost revenue—up to half a million dollars this weekend.”
For their part, Miami Beach officials understood that the policies would come at a cost but acknowledged this while defending the measures taken. Alex Fernandez, Miami Beach City Commissioner, told CBS News Miami, “We have implemented the strictest measures ever to protect life and property from stampedes, the shootings, the stabbings, we’ve seen in years past,” and went on to say, “There are shared sacrifices we make as a community to protect the life and property from criminals that we see year after year… How do you put a price on an innocent life—the life of a springbreaker?”
The complaint was filed on the night of Friday, March 15, around half an hour before the midnight curfew began. That evening, enforcement of the curfew reportedly went smoothly, with the entire Ocean Avenue strip cleared in less than half an hour. In a hearing that took place on Saturday, a judge upheld the city’s right to institute and enforce the curfew.
Miami Beach Mayor Steve Meiner went on Fox News Live to discuss the campaign’s success, saying, “This is the calmest Spring Break we’ve had in years… A number of restaurants that make their business, like traditional restaurants, are actually telling me thank you, that these measures have helped them, it’s kept things safer, calmer, and that they’re actually busier.” While acknowledging that some businesses were less than pleased, Meiner called the campaign a “win-win for everyone.”
Other locations in Miami were not so lucky during Spring Break. In Jacksonville Beach, police were forced to intervene when a group of up to 400 teenagers began to stage fights beneath a pier. The confrontation escalated into a shooting incident that left one person dead and three wounded.
