Walton County, Florida, residents want local law enforcement to get tougher on rowdy teenage spring breaker visitors.
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With about a month to go before the first spring break crowds arrive along the beaches of Walton County, residents and other stakeholders are pressing county law enforcement, beach safety and code enforcement personnel to take a tough stand against teenage visitors.
Clearly frustrated by what high school spring breakers bring to the county, residents went as far as calling for the county to institute a spring break curfew and to be more visible and proactive in addressing lawbreaking, particularly underage drinking.
Last year, Walton County Commissioner Tony Anderson, whose district includes most of the county's 26 miles of public and private beaches, asked for consideration of a spring break curfew, but his push went nowhere as Walton County Sheriff's Office Maj. Audie Rowell said deputies were maintaining a handle on the situation.
Rowell also then noted the difficulty of enforcing an age-based curfew, which would require checking individual IDs among what can be large crowds of young people.
Sheriff's Office Lt. Scott Hogeboom, who heads the office's special operations unit, acknowledged the problem with teenage spring break misbehavior at a Wednesday public workshop on the upcoming tourist season.
The workshop, which attracted more than 100 people – including beach vendors, residents and short-term vacation-rental housing operators – featured presentations from the Sheriff's Office, the Code Office, the South Walton Fire Department's Beach Safety Division and the Walton County Tourist Development Council's Beach Ambassadors program.
"High school is the worst part (of spring break)," Hogeboom said, explaining that the students who come down are accompanied by parents who don't adequately supervise their children.
"They let the kids do whatever they want," Hogeboom told the crowd, many of whom were already too aware of the teens' rowdy behavior.
Residents and law officers are, in fact, so keenly aware of spring break issues with teenagers that they track when specific communities and school districts have scheduled the breaks and use shorthand – "Atlanta week" or "Houston week", as just two examples – to differentiate the crowds.
"The beach was ransacked after that Atlanta week (last year)," an Inlet Beach resident told Hogeboom, complaining that at one point there were as many as 600 teenagers on the beach "breaking every law that there is."
Walton County Sheriff's Office Lt. Scott Hogeboom speaks with a woman who attended a Wednesday workshop that included a preview of how local public safety personnel will handle the upcoming spring break crowds.
Hogeboom acknowledged the point, saying, "Last year, we had a problem with Houston week."
This year, an "Atlanta week" runs from March 4-11, when three of the metropolitan area's private schools – Pace Academy, The Lovett School and Westminster Academy – hold their spring breaks on the same days. And from April 4-8, a number of metropolitan Atlanta county school systems will be on spring break.
Otherwise, school districts in Texas, including Houston, and in Tennessee are on break from March 14-20. After that, school districts in Alabama, Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio are on break from March 28-April 1.
"It's to the point we have to live with Atlanta, Nashville and Houston spring breakers instead of them doing what's right," the Inlet Beach resident told Hogeboom, adding that the county needs to take some definitive action to control the high school students.
More than 100 people, including beach vendors, residents and other stakeholders, attended a Wednesday workshop that covered preparations for the upcoming spring break.
Hogeboom briefed workshop attendees on how the Sheriff's Office handles the teenage spring break crowds. He noted that they and their parents are normally concentrated in the short-term vacation-rental housing along Walton County Road 30A in the high-end private communities stringing the route between Seaside and Rosemary Beach.
A number of those communities have established curfews for young people, Hogeboom said, but what routinely happens is that young people staying there will simply migrate from those properties and congregate elsewhere to avoid being told they can't be on the streets.
Routinely, Hogeboom said the Sheriff's Office strives for high visibility in Seaside by parking its mobile command post there to show its presence to teenagers and their parents. Additionally, Hogeboom said off-duty deputies often are working in other private communities during high school spring break.
Beyond that, Hogeboom said the Sheriff's Office monitors social media to learn where and when the teens have scheduled large parties, and make a point of being in those particular areas. And even outside of parties, Hogeboom said experience has taught deputies where the teens routinely gather.
But he added that deputies can't always be on top of every hot spot for teenage miscreant behavior.
"We can't be every hundred yards," he said.
Compounding the issues deputies face, Wednesday's crowd learned from another sheriff's deputy at the meeting that a deputy has to see a teenager violating the law – for instance, actually drinking alcohol underage – before making an arrest.
That's problematic, Hogeboom said, because "usually when they see us, they run off" so as not to be caught doing anything illegal.
Residents had any number of suggestions for the Sheriff's Office, from parking unmanned patrol cars at various trouble spots to beefing up the sheriff's posse – a group of unsworn volunteers that boosts the department's presence – to bringing in officers from other police departments.
Particularly popular was the idea of having the county government institute a curfew, with half of the crowd raising their hands in support of that notion.
"I think the county commissioners need to look at a curfew," said Victoria Lee, who lives in one of the private communities along CR 30A and noted that problems with high school spring breakers have "progressively gotten worse."
A failure to take decisive action, the Inlet Beach resident told Hogeboom and others at the meeting, will have significant consequences for the county.
"You're going to have news cameras here, and you're going to get a bad look if you don't do something about it," he said.
