USA Today, by Samantha Neely: Rowdy spring break crowds have forced curfews and led some establishments to close their doors from Miami Beach to Florida’s Panhandle.
Law enforcement officials in Bay County, Florida, said Sunday that they won’t tolerate the bad behavior from spring breakers after a 21-year-old from Alabama was shot in the foot Sunday during a shooting in Panama City Beach.
”The crowd that has been here this weekend, there are no words that can describe the way they have behaved themselves, conducted themselves and the amount of laws they have broken,” Panama City Beach police Chief J.R. Talamantez said Sunday after the shooting. “We are doing the best to manage this situation.”
Police received word that the large crowd was out of control just before the shooting happened on Sunday afternoon. Six people were detained and officials said they could be charged with attempted murder related to that shooting.
Law enforcement confiscated 75 guns, which they spread out on a table during a news conference on Monday in Panama City Beach.
Bay County Sheriff Tommy Ford said 161 people were booked into the county jail during a “difficult, trying and dangerous weekend. He noted that 78 of those arrested were from Alabama.
“Each one of these 75 illegal firearms represents a violent armed encounter with law enforcement,” Ford said. “This weekend could have very well resulted in tragedy of a law enforcement loss of life, a citizen’s loss of life and even a bad guy’s loss of life.”
Some local nightclubs volunteered to close their doors on Sunday night, Panama City police Chief Mark Smith said.
Officials noted that most of those arrested were not typical “spring breakers.”
“These are criminals that came to our city and brought the guns with the intent to commit some type of act,” Smith said.
In South Florida, raucous crowds, public drinking and growing violence associated with the city’s world-famous South Beach neighborhood led officials to impose a midnight curfew over the weekend. The action followed shootings that injured five people on South Beach last week.
The 10-block stretch of Ocean Drive known for art deco hotels, restaurants and bars lies between areas that cater to more affluent tourists, as well as locals. Many longtime residents have learned to treat spring break like a hurricane: Stay inside and hunker down until it’s over.
Friday evening Dianne Crockett, a Front Beach Road resident said she was taking her 4-year-old son to his baseball game when she was ran into a huge traffic jam caused by people fleeing and police being forced to shut down roads to contain the chaos.
“We’re like 20 minutes away from the ball field and it took us an hour to get there,” Crockett said. “And then afterwards, it took us over an hour to get home because all the roads were closed down. Walmart had closed down and it was just, it was a mess.”
Crockett said in her 16 years of living in the area, this is one of the most dangerous spring breaks she’s seen.
When asked about a possible curfew in Panama City Beach, Talamantez said “nothing is off the table.” He said officials are evaluating the situation. Officials plan to meet again on Friday to address the issue.
“I know the citizens are frustrated. Trust me, we are frustrated too,” Talamantez said. “The harsh reality is we cannot control who comes to town. But what we can control is what happens to you if you commit a crime in this town. We will hold you accountable.”
Prophetic Link:
“We are living in the midst of an epidemic of crime,’ at which thoughtful, God-fearing men everywhere stand aghast. The corruption that prevails, it is beyond the power of the human pen to describe. Every day brings fresh revelations of political strife, bribery, and fraud. Every day brings its heart-sickening record of violence and lawlessness, of indifference to human suffering, of brutal, fiendish destruction of human life. Every day testifies to the increase of insanity, murder, and suicide. Who can doubt that satanic agencies are at work among men with increasing activity to distract and corrupt the mind, and defile and destroy the body?” Counsels on Health, page 25.1.
Comments
Maureen Frañklin
Friday April 15th, 2022 at 05:09 AMThe prophetic insight at the end of this article was written over 100 years ago. The description of the wickednesd in the world then is quite mind boggling! How much worse things are today! We do indeed live in perilous times. If we knew the full extent of the wickednesd and suffering in the world we would not be able to bear it! Our only hope of surviving the current horrors and those that lie ahead is to keep our eyes on Jesus. We need to pray and pray and pray because there is no limit to the degradation to which human beings will sink if they allow Satan into their lives!!! Either our lives are in God’s hands or Satan is our puppet master!! Lord Jesus please keep your people!