For years, Miami Beach officials had tried to get the word out: Spring breakers, go somewhere else.
The city’s former mayor, Dan Gelber, couldn’t have been more explicit in March 2023. “We do not want spring break,” he said.
But the spring breakers came in droves anyway. Last year, there were repeated stampedes from jumpy crowds that packed Ocean Drive. After two deadly shootings, the second of which made global headlines after a man was executed at close range on a busy sidewalk, the city declared a curfew for the fourth consecutive year.
A slew of measures put in place this year, including a viral ad campaign, appears to have turned the tides: Last month, there were no shootings related to spring break. Citywide arrest numbers were down by 8%, and police said they seized fewer than 70 guns after seizing more than 100 last year.
At an event Tuesday honoring the 18 law enforcement agencies that descended on South Beach during spring break, Miami Beach Mayor Steven Meiner declared victory.
“Our residents are thrilled,” he said. “We can stand here and celebrate the success we had.”
‘Spring break, we’re over’
The stark difference between spring break 2023 and spring break 2024 was no accident, according to Meiner. In the 12 months since last year’s spring break, city leaders sought to take proactive measures to change the narrative for 2024. They endorsed a curfew one year in advance. They scrapped a programming strategy deemed unsuccessful in the prior two years, redirecting $3 million to police overtime. They voted for $100 parking rates in South Beach — and then, in late February, went even further to shut down most public parking options entirely for non-residents.
Still, as March 2024 approached, many still feared this year would bring more of the same. Elected officials, local businesses and the city’s police union second-guessed parts of the plan. Metal detectors and a secured perimeter around Ocean Drive, a priority for the newly elected mayor, didn’t materialize. Many of the law enforcement measures proposed — including license-plate readers, a DUI checkpoint and hundreds of cops from local and state agencies — had been tried in years past, though this year’s effort was beefed up and came with added support from Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Then came the video. A marketing campaign, cooked up in the months before March by the Miami Beach communications department and the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau, declared the city was “breaking up with spring break.” It started with the launch of a web page detailing the city’s spring break measures, featuring an imagined text message conversation in which Miami Beach says: “Spring break, we’re over.” The city bought two billboards to blast out the message to drivers coming in and out of the barrier island.
On March 1, the city released a one-minute video that it had paid an ad agency, VML, $250,000 to produce. In it, young actors mimic a breakup conversation — “Hey, we need to talk,” the ad begins — to implore young people looking to drink and party to go somewhere else for spring break. “And don’t try to apologize and come crawling back. This isn’t safe, so we are done,” an actor says.
The ad immediately went viral, including on platforms visible to spring breakers, like TikTok and Instagram. By mid-March, Melissa Berthier, the city’s marketing and communications director, said the “breakup” campaign, including the video, had an estimated 220 million social media impressions.
There was backlash to the city’s messaging campaign from some Black community leaders in Miami-Dade County, who said it echoed a long history of Miami Beach being unwelcoming to Black visitors. The city’s Black Affairs Advisory Board expressed opposition to the campaign. And County Commissioner Keon Hardemon called the city’s plan “tone deaf” and questioned whether the county should pay to send its officers to South Beach to assist the city during spring break.
“I don’t want to be a part of anything that can be deemed to be onerous, draconian, heavy-handed by a municipality that is especially effected upon people that, for the most part, are just like me,” Hardemon said at a meeting in early March.
‘Our residents are thrilled’
As peak spring break season began, it became clear that the city’s message was having the desired effect. Crowds were noticeably smaller. The mood was relatively calm. And, unlike in past years, everyone on Ocean Drive seemed to be aware of the city’s anti-spring break campaign.
“Of course we did,” Josh Pryor, 21, a senior at Georgia State University visiting for spring break, told the Miami Herald when asked if he and his friends had seen the viral video. “It’s everywhere.”
On X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, young people talked about how Miami Beach was “canceling” spring break — not quite accurate, but reflective of the city’s messaging — and how they planned to go elsewhere as a result. Party promoters advertised more events in the city of Miami. Fort Lauderdale reported seeing bigger crowds as some revelers avoided South Beach.
In an interview, Police Chief Wayne Jones pointed to the messaging campaign as a critical inflection point.
“I think what felt different really started with the communication campaign,” Jones said. “Moving forward, my biggest recommendation to the administration is that we’ve got to have other really smart campaigns like we did, communicating to the world what the expectations are before they get here, because it really helps us police better.”
There were still thousands of people on Ocean Drive. Crowds began to swell as the third weekend of March approached. On Friday, March 15, City Manager Alina Hudak declared a midnight curfew for all of South Beach for the remainder of the weekend. Several nightclubs filed an emergency lawsuit saying the curfew would crush their business, but the city successfully defended its decision in a Saturday afternoon court hearing.
Jones told a judge he recommended the curfew after seeing the atmosphere change on Ocean Drive, describing widespread public drinking and an area “awash” in the smell of marijuana. He suggested that, in past years, those indicators have been a “precursor” to violent incidents.
The curfew was enforced with no major incidents. Police made four arrests for curfew violations during the three days it was in effect, according to jail booking data.
The final two weekends of March were fairly quiet, in part because of inclement weather and fewer college students having their breaks during those weeks. City officials kept parts of their spring break crackdown in place through the end of the month, including $30 parking, double towing fees, 6 p.m. beach entrance closures and restricted vehicle access to residential neighborhoods.
As March drew to a close, the results were clear: While there were several incidents of violence during the month — including a police officer shooting a fellow officer during a scuffle with a man seemingly having a mental health crisis, an accidental shooting that injured two people in a South Beach liquor store and a non-fatal stabbing in a hotel room — none of them took place amid large spring break crowds.
Misdemeanor arrests were up as of mid-March, seemingly reflecting a crackdown on quality-of-life crimes like marijuana-related offenses. Miami Beach police charged at least 38 people in March with possession of small amounts of marijuana and charged at least 12 people with smoking marijuana on public property, according to a Herald review of jail booking data and court records. Among those 50 people arrested, 38 were Black, records show. Some of the arrests included additional charges.
What’s next for spring break?
Beginning at a City Commission meeting Wednesday, officials will discuss what this year’s spring break results mean for 2025 and beyond. Some say the drastic approach — which saw about 600 police officers from various agencies patrolling South Beach — isn’t sustainable. The city budgeted $3.9 million for this year’s spring break plan, most of which was for overtime for police working extended hours throughout the month.
The hope, officials say, is that such extreme measures will become less necessary as Miami Beach becomes less of a spring break destination. But that may take time. Hudak, who recently tendered her resignation after three years as the city’s top administrator, said in an interview that the city should probably take a similar approach to spring break next year.
In a Herald op-ed Tuesday, David Wallack, the owner of Mango’s Tropical Cafe on Ocean Drive, warned that if the city doesn’t find a major event in March to replace spring break, “the economic damage next year will be absolute, along with the repeated need to mobilize another army of police again and every year after that.”
Wallack has pushed for a major music festival in the past, but plans never moved forward. A major British motorsport event was also floated but has yet to materialize. Wednesday’s commission agenda includes proposals for a fitness festival and a financial conference in March 2025.
“Spring break is an American cultural phenomenon of energy,” Wallack wrote. “Only another ‘cultural phenomenon’ of equal or greater energy can transform it.”
Hudak, however, said she believes the city will need more time to pull off the kind of large-scale event that some have pushed for to transform tourism during the month of March.
“I think that, to expect that next year will be perfect and that we can somehow transition from what we experienced this year to a month next year that has events, we need probably another year or two,” she told the Herald. “I know that, if I were here, next year would probably be very similar to this year.”
Meanwhile, the success of this year’s spring break crackdown is likely to strengthen “law and order” initiatives by Meiner and other officials seeking to change the city, and particularly South Beach, from a party destination to a quiet, resident-friendly locale.
“This is a 365-day endeavor,” Meiner said, “to give our law enforcement the tools that they need to enforce the law.”
Amanda Smith is a dedicated U.S. correspondent with a passion for uncovering the stories that shape the nation. With a background in political science, she provides in-depth analysis and insightful commentary on domestic affairs, ensuring readers are well-informed about the latest developments across the United States.
