By Angie DiMichele | [email protected] | South Florida Sun Sentinel

Fort Lauderdale was popping up on everyone’s social media as the top Spring Break destination for a week full of partying.

When they arrived, some found less chaos than they hoped for, college-aged revelers told the South Florida Sun Sentinel. Others felt they found just the right amount.

Monday marked the police department’s last official day of Spring Break enforcement, and by all accounts, this year’s monthlong event wrapped up without any major incidents. Fort Lauderdale Police personnel told the Sun Sentinel on Monday they largely saw a cooperative, polite crowd that resulted in minimal arrests.

Tourists still got into plenty of classic Spring Break fun: A twerking contest for a free drink, filming TikToks with officers, and blowing too much money too quickly at bars.

As of Monday afternoon, Fort Lauderdale Police had made a total of 37 arrests in the city during Spring Break, while the Division of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco made two, department spokesperson Casey Liening said. Just over 4,000 citations were issued, the majority given to rideshare drivers for breaking rules for drop-offs and to drivers with illegal tints or loud exhausts. One minor who was among a crowd of about 400 who packed the beach last Thursday night was also arrested.

Out of the fewer than 40 arrests, no one was arrested for behavior on the actual sand, Sgt. Monica Ferrer said. All of those who were arrested at the beach were from the bars, with Rock Bar seeing the most action from officers.

About half of the people arrested were actual Spring Breakers rather than locals or “non-Spring Breakers,” on charges of trespassing, disorderly intoxication, fraud, DUI and battery on a firefighter, according to statistics the police department has released in the last several weeks.

A local man was arrested in mid-March, accused of sexually assaulting a Spring Breaker outside of a nightclub.

Ferrer said they saw “much smaller groups” this Spring Break than in the past, likely related to the high costs of flights and vacation rentals. And despite concerns over the last few years that Fort Lauderdale might see rowdier crowds after Miami Beach’s “break up” with Spring Break, the city to its north once again didn’t see any of those anticipated problems.

All in all, Ferrer called it “another successful year.”

“They’ve been very respectful. They know exactly what they can do and not do on the beach, and we’ve had a really good crowd,” Ferrer said.

Last Spring Break, Fort Lauderdale Police made 24 Spring Break-related arrests between March 1 and March 29. There was one major incident, where a West Point cadet died by drowning. During Spring Break 2023, police made seven arrests, the Sun Sentinel previously reported.

Though long gone are Fort Lauderdale’s wildest Spring Break days, tourists Makayla Douglas, 21, and Abby Bourne, 20, from upstate New York, said Fort Lauderdale is still considered one of the coveted destinations. After spending nearly a week in the city, they said they were expecting more mayhem and were even a little disappointed that there wasn’t, though their break didn’t coincide with the two peak weekends. They went to Sway Nightclub in downtown on one of the weeknights and were surprised to find there “was barely a crowd,” Douglas said.

“I expected to go crazy in a club somewhere,” Douglas said. “That hasn’t happened.”

Douglas and Bourne said some of the highlights of their break included winning a twerking contest at Señor Frog’s and managing to get into spots without paying absurdly high cover fees. Bourne said she had already dropped about $2,000, mostly on food and drinks, while Douglas said her friend has been her “sugar mama” during their trip. Bourne said when they have ventured out, hordes of guys have flocked to them; she compared it to seagulls swarming morsels of food left on the beach.

They soaked up the sun and sand on Monday as their vacation will come to an end in a few days.

“We wanna have fun, we wanna turn up, but we’re respectful at the same time,” Douglas said. “We don’t want to get in trouble. We just want to have fun.”

Sydney Ingram, 21, Amanda Muller, 21, and Aliyah King, 21, all came down to Fort Lauderdale from California. TikTok made Fort Lauderdale out to be the popular place, the group of girlfriends said. Muller said her boyfriend wasn’t thrilled about the fact that she was coming to the “Venice of America.”

“That’s the place to go if you wanna cheat,” she said her boyfriend opined.

Though they blew about $100 on just a few drinks their first night in town at a hotel tiki bar, Muller said the more relaxed Spring Break scene was refreshing.

Community Support Unit Officers Victoria Rodriguez and Nick Herring rode up and down the sand in an ATV, passing plenty of locals and sporadic groups of college-aged kids lying out in the sun about 1 p.m. Monday. The smell of suntan lotion scented the air. Rap music played on a speaker. Some heads turned as the officers rode by, while some people waved at them. A young man holding a drink in his hand asked them if he was allowed to have his drink there and followed the rules when they told him no, one example of the friendly encounters the police department personnel said they had mostly had this year.

Herring said a lot of people came from South Carolina this year but most tend to come from schools in Michigan.

“But they’re not all that rowdy,” he said. “The Florida schools tend to be rowdier.”

One of the department’s units passed out koozies this year that had drug test strips inside for Spring Breakers to test their drinks for anything nefarious, Herring said.

Nothing really excites the crowds at the beach like when a social media influencer comes out to film content, Herring said. An influencer asked some of the department’s officers to participate in a staged video that later went viral on TikTok and Instagram — three officers chasing him down shouting, “Hey! Stop!”

Ferrer credited the officers’ positive engagement with Spring Breakers with how they’ve managed to strike the balance between being a welcoming destination while also keeping things under control.

“They get used to us, and they’re very respectful and it’s a positive experience,” she said.

Ethan Harris, 19, of Fort Wayne, Ind., played spikeball with a group of friends on the sand. Each of them wore flashy swim trunks, decorated with bright patterns of flamingos, pizza and an American flag.

The police presence was noticeable, Harris said, but not “excessive.” He posed for a picture with Jester, the horse patrolling the beach Monday afternoon.

“They are friendly,” he said.

Monday was just the beginning of the vacation for Harris and his friends Andrew Glass, 20, and Derrick Plewa, 18, also of Indiana. They, too, said they picked Fort Lauderdale as their destination based on what they’d seen on social media, mostly of partying.

“We heard it was a good time. In Indiana, it’s talked about … Who wouldn’t wanna join that?” Glass said.