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With an increase of spring breakers flocking to the panhandle comes a spike in call volume for law enforcement agencies. The Panama City Beach Police are now on ten and twelve-hour shifts to help manage problems along the beach.
The officers don’t even have time to eat. It’s one traffic stop after another with a few noise violations in between making spring break quite a test of endurance for law enforcement.
Even the morning keeps dispatch busy at the Panama City Beach Police Department. The phones ring off the hooks and officers are constantly calling in for everything from traffic stops to car accidents.
Major David Humphreys with the beach police says the call volume is high but normal for this phase of the spring break season “…I think it’s a normal call volume that we’re seeing right now. It will actually increase as we get through March.”
The call volume may be just a number, but it’s reality to officers to deal with.
Officer Scott Wommack says he’s had to tell many people that “…life’s not fair. You got caught, and he’ll get caught too, eventually.”
Tuesday midday Officer Wommack responds to everything from noise ordinance violations to a hit and run involving a pack of scooters and a small car. Wommack says people who aren’t cooperative make his job tough and he hopes they will think before acting “…I’m enforcing the law, so maybe that will help change your way of thinking…”
The Bay County Jail normally books about 40 people a day. And a normal 3 day weekend yields around 90 bookings. Yesterday 76 people were taken into custody. And last weekend 132 people ended up in jail for the 3 days.
The beach police say they’ve handled spring break for years though and are able to cope with the call volume “…I guess it’s all relative for us…steady for us busy for them if they’re not used to dealing with high volume in a resort area.”
According to beach police they are able to contact hotels and resorts to help predict when they’ll be busiest.
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Well thank you to the many Police Officers that protect us night and day.I do know how taxing large volumes of people can become.But without spring breakers summer visitors and snow birds all we would have left are Large empty Hotels and T shirt shops selling bong pipes.