ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Spring breakers headed to Miami Beach this year will encounter a long list of strict regulations. It's part of the city's effort to crack down on spring break crowds. Julia Cooper from member station WLRN reports.
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UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) Miami Beach, here we come.
JULIA COOPER, BYLINE: The city released a slick ad that follows a fictional group of college students excited to indulge in Miami Beach revelry in a spoofed reality TV show.
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UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) Once we got to Miami Beach, things went downhill fast.
COOPER: They have a good time until city regulations get in the way.
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UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #3: (As character) You're drinking in public. That's not allowed. This speaker - that's not allowed
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #4: (As character) Rule after rule after rule.
COOPER: The message - while the show is fake, the penalties for not complying with city laws are not. The $425,000 video is part of a larger crackdown that follows a spate of shootings in recent years, including two that were fatal in 2023.
STEVEN MINOR: We saw that the measures we took last year were necessary and it worked. We had an incredibly successful spring break. No fatalities, no shootings, no stampedes.
COOPER: That's Miami Beach Mayor, Steven Minor. He says that while the long-term goal is to eventually be able to loosen restrictions, there aren't plans for when that might happen.
MINOR: We felt it necessary to do it again this year, and we'll take every year on a case-by-case basis. It partly depends on how successful we are this year.
COOPER: Throughout March, there will be a-hundred-dollar parking fees, sobriety checkpoints, curfews and limited sidewalk seating, among a long list of other restrictions. Though officials consider last year's spring break wildly successful, Miami Beach Police Chief Wayne Jones says he understands the rules had some negative impacts.
WAYNE JONES: The way I look at it, quite frankly, is short-term pain for long-term gain.
COOPER: Last year, some residents complained about more traffic congestion as people looked for parking, and businesses along Ocean Drive say they lost some customers. But Jones says the city's goal is clear.
JONES: Get to a place where kids are coming down here having a good time without shooting, hurting each other, we're going to have to go through this process.
COOPER: Some critics say the strict regulations racially target Black visitors who've been coming to South Beach over the last two decades, but Chief Jones says that's not the case.
JONES: We police behavior, not race or ethnicity. And the whole idea is you come down here to our city, you play by our rules, not break the law, and we'll welcome you back again and again and again.
COOPER: Crackdowns like this have worked at other popular Florida destinations. Stacy Ritter heads Visit Lauderdale. She says in the '90s, when Fort Lauderdale increased restrictions on spring breakers...
STACY RITTER: We saw a definite dip and those visitors went elsewhere - Panama City, Daytona Beach, which then saw their own issues as a result, and then they started to crack down, and so they sort of migrated back south.
COOPER: Ritter says in this spring break moving cycle, Fort Lauderdale wouldn't mind taking in some of the crowds avoiding Miami this year.
RITTER: I think if Miami Beach is trying to crack down on the spring break crowd completely, they're doing a good job of conveying the message that visitors aren't welcome and that they should go someplace else. We'll take advantage of that.
COOPER: Should they choose Fort Lauderdale, she says the city will also have rules to abide by because it has learned how to manage crowds of students. Spring break restrictions on Miami Beach will be in effect the entire month of March. For NPR News, I'm Julia Cooper in Miami. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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