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PANAMA CITY BEACH, Fla. – Thousands of spring breakers are expected to hit Florida beaches over the next few weeks.
Spring break shenanigans, wild parties and underage drinking are nothing new for officers across the Sunshine State, but the Panama City Beach (PCB) police chief says fentanyl is raising the risks.
“The spring break of today is not the spring break of 20, 30 years ago,” Chief J.R. Talamantez said. “Today’s spring break in a lot of ways brings a different level of violence.”
Talamantez’s department saw just that last year when officers made over 160 arrests in one spring break weekend.
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“Our city was just invaded by stupid people doing stupid things,” Talamantez said. “They came down specifically to try to victimize our community.”
With fentanyl showing up more often within the party drugs that dealers attempt to market to spring breakers, such as Adderall and Xanax, the PCB police department is ramping up its drug enforcement efforts.
“We’ve increased our K-9 programs,” Talamantez said. “We used to have four canines. Now we have eight because we see the importance of aggressively enforcing drug crimes.”
The PCB police department now has the largest K-9 unit in Florida’s panhandle.
In addition to K-9s, the police department is also using crime cameras to monitor “hot spots.”
“We utilized this method last year and had great success,” Talamantez said. “Like many departments, we are also struggling with a shortage of officers. This helps us with additional eyes.”
Talamantez says by watching the cameras, officers can tell when a beach crowd is about to get out of hand. “We can dispatch our officers before that 911 call,” he noted.
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All officers on PCB also carry Narcan, a nasal spray…
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