Coastal Florida towns are playing hot potato with spring breakers who use social media to organize “takeovers” of gatherings by drunken flash mobs, leading to violence and mass arrests.
Cops locked down Daytona Beach this week after a string of shootings and a beach “takeover” that ended in a mass stampede of high-school and college students fleeing for their lives.
That single “takeover” resulted in 133 arrests and prompted authorities to turn the entire beach into a party quarantine zone, with doubled fines for citations and strict limits on gathering sizes, according to the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office.
Daytona had realized its mistake too late — it welcomed the huddled, thirsty masses that had already been turned away by other local beach towns.
“It’s really these communities that start welcoming spring breakers that have things get out of control,” explained Tommy Ford, sheriff of Bay County, which includes the onetime party mecca of Panama City Beach.
Such towns in the Florida panhandle used to be ground-zero for beach keg stands and wet T-shirt contests — until years of violence, underage drinking and sexual assaults finally pushed them to employ beach alcohol bans, strict curfews and legions of law enforcement officers to keep things family-friendly.
But even with crackdowns, revelers still try to push the limit — including in Panama City Beach on Saturday night at an out-of-control popular beach bar.
Officers from three different law-enforcement agencies showed up with paintball guns and pepper spray to curb the crowd, including over-the-top lewd twerkers.
One of the officers ordered a group of girls to stop twerking — or else, with town officials saying there is a ban on excessively sexual moves.
In nearby Walton County, the sheriff’s office has taken to savagely roasting out-of-control partiers on social media.
So kids are testing out other party frontiers such as Daytona and even across state lines, to Port Aransas, Texas — where a recent shooting left five wounded and one young spring breaker horribly maimed when he tried to dance atop a speeding Jeep.
Law enforcement lament that the problem is that the excessive partying has taken a dark turn.
Gone is the era of the wet T-shirt contests and “Girls Gone Wild” photo shoots when spring breakers might get lewd and sloppy, but at least the mayhem was somewhat predictable and contained.
Now, the “takeovers” arranged on social media and private WhatsApp groups mean thousands of kids can appear out of nowhere in a completely uncontrolled setting.
“One of the biggest challenges we face today is the speed at which gatherings can form,” said the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office, which patrols Destin, Fla., told The Post.
Deputies in Okaloosa have now started using “data-driven and intelligence-led policing” to monitor social media chatter and shut down the takeovers before they start, the agency told The Post.
But spring break isn’t over.
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In fact, next month, high schools in Atlanta will set their kids free to descend like locusts on Florida beaches.
Bay County actually put up billboards around Atlanta urging parents to keep their kids in line, according to Sheriff Ford.
Ford said the over-the-top young revelers better not try his neck of the woods in Panama City Beach.
“If they do come this way, we’ll be ready for them,” he said.
