As Spring Break trickles to a halt in Walton County, Sheriff Mike Adkinson is calling his agency’s 2014 no tolerance for underage drinking policy “very successful.”
Deputies have carted 506 spring breakers off the beaches and to the county jail. They’ve additionally handed out 247 notices to appear in court.
“I know there’s been some wailing and crying and gnashing of teeth,” Adkinson said.
Nearly all of the offenses have been alcohol-related, with the majority for underage drinking. There have also been a handful of drug arrests and five house parties broken up.
Though the end is near, the spring break season can’t be called over yet, said Walton County Tourist Development Council Director Jim Bagby.
Schools from Cincinnati, Chattanooga and Mobile, as well as Louisiana State University, Southwest Louisiana and Tulane will be converging on Northwest Florida in the week before Easter.
Thus far though, Bagby said, the Sheriff’s Office efforts have been effective in the areas where trouble spots existed in year’s past.
“I think the sheriff applied the proper pressure to the proper places,” Bagby said. “I think he did a good job there.”
Adkinson said both the cops and the kids have learned some things in the first year of a policy that may be tweaked, but will certainly be re-imposed next year.
It took “like four days in a row of setting single day booking records at the jail” to make it clear at the outset of the spring break season that the county was serious about its lack of tolerance, Adkinson said.
“We’d arrest an initial wave of people the first day or two they were here and then we’d see it dying down by the end of the week,” the sheriff said.
Deputies came to appreciate the “educational component” of arresting underage drinkers and real-ized the fact it took three or four other young people to bail one out of the county jail “slows down the party train.”
“That’s exactly what this was designed to do,” he said.
He said the policy of arresting underage drinkers rather than ticketing them greatly cut down on the number of repeat offenders.
Adkinson said the Sheriff’s Office was “amazed to learn” how quickly word got out through social me-dia. Many spring breakers had already heard Walton County’s reputation by the time they arrived.
“People knew where the Okaloosa-Walton county line was, and when we were over there by the Whale’s Tail 20 or 30 deep with deputies there’d be people going to the other side,” he said.
He said the Sheriff’s Office will “reemphasize a media blitz to colleges” next year and look at staffing needs to insure all shifts are equipped to take underage partiers to jail at any time of the day or night.
Contact Daily News Staff Writer Tom McLaughlin at 850-315-4435 or tmclaughlin@nwfdailynews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TomMnwfdn.