Rowdy spring break crowds have forced curfews and led some businesses to close their doors from Miami Beach to Florida’s Panhandle. Law enforcement officials in Bay County, Fl., said they won’t tolerate the bad behavior from spring breakers after a 21-year-old from Alabama was shot in the foot Sunday in Panama City Beach, reports the Associated Press. ”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,” said Panama City Beach Police Chief J.R. Talamantez. Police received word that the large crowd was out of control just before the shooting happened. Six people were detained and officials said they could be charged with attempted murder.
Police 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. "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.” Officials noted that most of those arrested were not typical “spring breakers.” Panama City Police Chief Mark Smith said, “These are criminals that came to our city and brought the guns with the intent to commit some type of act." In South Florida, raucous crowds, public drinking and growing violence associated with the city’s 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.
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