Daytona and you see this boy like this, bro. Did we run for no reason? Somebody in the back of that car is 12, 12 out here chilling. We running. What's what's going on? Did we run for no reason? Yeah. Okay, well, let's I can't beat social media. I I I just can't do it. Social media, people can post stuff. They're reposting things from 2020, and there's no way to really defend that. This incident during last weekend was clearly social media driven, okay? Let's all go and invade Daytona. And there ain't a whole whole lot we can do other than what we did. So, what we did from the Sheriff's Office, for example, was from the Main Street Pier to Seabreeze Boulevard, we had over 50 deputies inside of that crowd. So, you hear all this stuff, "Oh, they were shooting guns on the beach." That is absolute [ __ ] There were zero gunshots on the beach because what they were doing was crushing a water bottle to make it sound like a gunshot to stampede the crowd. I was out there, the chief was out there, we were in the middle of it. People might not want to hear this, but everybody who we came in contact with was absolutely uh polite. Hey player, be cool, but you're not allowed to smoke weed on the beach. You need to walk over here with me, all right? It's going to be a $50 ticket, and I'm going to have you on your way. Don't make it worse than it is. Cool? Come on. So, for this weekend alone, we made 133 total arrests. 84 of them in Daytona Beach, 49 of them in New Smyrna Beach. What is concerning is we seized six weapons. Two of them were on an adult, one adult carrying two guns, and a juvenile who had possession of a stolen firearm. But what's more disheartening and people need to understand is everybody can carry a gun in Florida. Doesn't matter the color of your skin, doesn't matter your It matters your age, but you know what? There's a lot of people out there and and the chief counted over 20 encounters where we may have stopped somebody for an open container who was an adult who said to us, "I want to let you know, I got my gun in my backpack." And there's nothing wrong with that. You can carry your gun concealed, they can carry a weapon open carry. So, it's a new generation in dealing with Spring Break. If they're legal to possess a firearm, they can carry it concealed or they can carry it open. And that's what we had out there. There were a lot of people armed with guns on top of the bad guys armed with guns. We also came in contact with seven folks who were here illegally who we took into custody and ICE has lodged detainers against them. I'm going to give you guys and you're more than welcome to do it. This is our arrest logs for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Now, there's not a lot of people who are going to say it, but I'm going to say it. I am damn proud of the men and women of the Volusia Sheriff's Office for what they did this weekend. We canceled days off, we had events in New Smyrna, we had events in Daytona, we had events in Spring Hill, we had events out at the fairgrounds. So, my office was running and pardon expression, running and gunning and working their asses off. And again, I can't control content of what goes on social media. That's one of the things we're we're glad you're here for so that we can get the word out as to what we were looking at. We arrested people from Alabama, from Georgia, from North Carolina, from South Carolina, from Florida, you name it, it everybody was here. Excuse me, can we get this stuff? Not right now. You guys need to hang out over there. It's my club. You guys need to stay back 25 ft. In the state of Florida, there's a thing called the Halo Act. So, whenever we're conducting our business, you have to stay back 25 ft. Otherwise, you can go to jail, too. That's what I don't need to worry about his buddies walking up behind me while I'm dealing with him is what the whole point of it is. We were out there I with the chief was out there forever on Saturday. I was out there for about 7 hours. And again, like I said, everybody we encountered we made an arrest in a crowd of a thousand people, nobody said anything. They let us do our job. And when we told people to move on, they moved on. When we went to we closed the beach at 7:00, they moved on. But, the stampedes in the in the video you're seeing was clearly them crushing water bottles for that reason to do that. And thank God that's what it was. Years Years past it was different. I think this is the most deputies we've ever had on the beach in my 20 years here. Uh and we stayed out until probably close to 11:00 when I had to take resources and shift them to another another part of the county. So, you guys got any any questions? I don't think I missed anything. Sheriff, can you just explain for people who don't know the difference between what you guys do on the beach and then what happens on land? It's not the same. Yeah, we're Our job in the sheriff's office is since we took over the beach several years ago, our job is law enforcement on the beach. So, that is county jurisdiction. That is my jurisdiction. Once they leave and go up on the blacktop, they're in the city limits. But, we just don't say, "Hey, we cleared the beach. Our job is done." No, our job is to support Daytona Beach in everything that they need, whether it's air support, whether it's traffic enforcement, no matter what it is, and that's what we did. You know, their command staff was embedded with my command staff reviewing everything that was going on, working traffic patterns, trying to answer calls for service, trying to do as much as you can. But, again, you have an unsanctioned event run by social media. My estimate is probably somewhere close to 9,000 people, maybe even 10,000 people came in. It's kind of hard It's kind of hard to control those things as you see in other uh places around the state and other places when spring break comes into play. But again, I I appreciate the efforts of everything that we did. You know, we have a strong presence in New Smyrna. We had a strong presence in Daytona and the west side of the county, there were two events that we had have a strong presence at on top of policing what's going on here. What types of charges did these individuals who were arrested face in total? >> You We're facing everything from possession of a firearm, uh you know, you go through these things, speed, speeding on the beach, e-bikes speeding, open container is in there. Uh it runs the gamut, everything. We We crack down on quality of life. If you had an open container, you got cited for it. If you were a juvenile, you got picked up, taken here to this facility, and your parents had to come and get you. If you were out there smoking weed, most of the times we told you to put it out, but there were people who wanted to maybe argue a little bit, they got arrested and charged accordingly. So, like I said, the logs are yours, they're public record, you can go through them and you look at the places of where these folks are from. You know, you got Winter Springs, Orlando, and Apopka, but then you have North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, and a lot of places in Georgia that I never even heard of. Sheriff, so before we came here, we talked to a Daytona Beach official who told us they didn't have time to get a special event zone by the time that they had heard of this event. How quickly can those go in play? >> 48 hours. 48, okay. So, I have to I have under the law, I have to give and and I believe it's 48 hours. I have to give the public notice and post it for 48 hours. This is what's going to occur in these in these zones. So, you have 48 hours, it can be done. Do you know if they had heard >> 24 hours. Well, there you go. 24 hours now. It's okay. So, all I need is 24 hours. Do you know if Was this on your guys's radar that an event pop up event might have been >> We It was It was on all of our radar because we were looking to see if there was a way to find a promoter to where we can go to the promoter and say, "You will be responsible for all of the cost for police, fire, EMS, and trash pickup if you do that." And we couldn't identify both organizations working together couldn't identify. It was just like, "Hey, if there's going to be a party at, you know, whatever." Just pick a place. And And everybody say, "Let's all go meet at this place." There's really not a hell of a whole lot you can do to stop that. But you don't need the promoter to do a special event. No. All we needed We could All we needed to do is if the city has to play ball. Again, I can I can I can say as the sheriff, "We're going to declare a special event zone." And if the city commission says, "My police department is not going to participate in that." Then why the hell am I declaring a special event zone in the city of Daytona Beach if they're if they're not going to allow their police department to participate? So, you know, that's that's the issue. You know, it was an influx of people and I I won't go any further than that unless you ask something different. But that's where we're at. Do you have a rough idea what that price tag was to all these guys? Oh, God. I It's hundred It's hundred to hundred to thousands of dollars. That's why I say earlier when I tell people, "We don't want spring break." Spring break brings no financial benefit here cuz you think of it. They drove in for one day cuz if you were on that beach yesterday, it was completely a different beach. Cuz everybody that came in on Saturday left. They didn't stay in a hotel room. They didn't eat in a restaurant. They didn't do anything. Anything. The liquor stores probably made money, but other than that I I We We and the chief walked up and down with our folks. There was nobody in no stores along A1A. Very few people went into Baskin-Robbins. Very few people went into Dunkin' Donuts. Everybody else was just out to to make to meander around. So, it brings no economic benefit. I know it was in your jurisdiction. Did you hear from Daytona Beach within the city. I mean, four shootings within 24 hours. Just just your reaction to that. Yeah, I think you got to look into those things because I think one of the things we're getting painted broadly about the deputy, thank God he's alive and there's another guy that had an angel on his shoulder. That had nothing to do with spring break. You know, one of the shootings down on Kingston Avenue, I think, from what little I know, that had nothing to do with spring break from what I know. I don't know the specifics. I do know the one teenager from Georgia who was shot on A1A. That was clearly a spring break uh shooting. But again, remember something here, everybody's got a gun. Everybody's got a gun. If we encounter 20 people who we told to dump out alcohol and they can't take their gun, it's a COV and they're telling us I got a gun in my backpack, how many other people were concealed carrying? We didn't see open carry, but people can open carry down there. They're allowed. There's There are no anything to prevent that. And when you have an influx of people like that, especially Floridians who know what their rights are, you can best bet there's a lot of damn guns out there. Sheriff quick question because we were doing other things quick. What information can you start with to provide for us quick? So, what I do I think you guys weren't here. What our stats were for the first 3 days of spring break, just the sheriff's office, 133 total arrests. We made 84 in Daytona over that little span and we made 49 in New Smyrna Beach. We We made six gun arrests. One of those arrests was a juvenile who had possession of a stolen gun. One of those individuals had two guns. In at least 20 stops where somebody had booze and they had to dump it out and we're going to give you a ticket, those individuals identified us and said, "Hey, just letting you know I got a gun in my backpack." Which was Which I We appreciate them doing that. So, if So, there's where we know there's a lot more guns out there that were out there. We came in contact with seven individuals who were in the country illegally and they were taken into custody and ICE presented a detainer to them. Uh I know that the center here processed I think 17 juveniles and a few of them their parents were notified from Jacksonville and other places to come and get your kid because they're drunk and high and they've been arrested. In terms of that crowd that we were hearing about, can you talk about the importance of that and if there was any jurisdiction there from the police department? >> Well, first of all, for me there is no jurisdiction. The city of Daytona Beach is more than welcome to come down on the beach and help me if they want to do so we'll do so and they do and I can go up with a blacktop anytime I want and we do do that. We we seamlessly we we plan together our part of our command station we're embedded together to be checking hotspots to make sure everybody knew where everybody was and how to dispatch and how to do things like that. I can't reiterate again I can't control social media. Somebody's put you filming those stampedes and oh there were gunshots. That's a that's a that's a lie. It's a lie cuz we were out there. I was out there for almost 7 hours. The chief was out there a lot longer. We were in the crowd. We were in the middle of those crowds with people crushing water bottles to start a stampede. Thank God there were no no gunshots. In years past there have been but we had the the biggest police presence I will tell you and I've been here 20 years I don't think I've seen a bigger presence on that beach than we saw this year. And that was just spitballing. We were just going by the traction on social media. There was no promoter. We were just figuring what was going on. It was probably the biggest crowd since 2020. I mean there's recirculating somebody twerking on me from 2020. It it didn't happen in 2020 and it's popping up. Oh the service in the middle of that that that that didn't happen but we're losing the social media battle. That's that's the issue. What did the beach look like after all these people left? A lot of trash? I will use the I'll tell you what the folks cleaning up told me. It was a bigger [ __ ] than after the 4th of July and after the 4th of July there's a lot of trash on that beach. There was a lot of trash on that beach. Thank God if you're an environmentalist the tide wasn't one of those tides that came all the way up cuz all that stuff would have been swept out. So the tide was relatively where they can pick a lot of that stuff up. But if the beach was trashed, as you would expect when you have that many people coming in there. And you know, if you had a metal detector, you'd probably make some money on Sunday if you went out there. I'm sure there was jewelry and all kind of other stuff out there. Thanks, Sheriff. So, we'll see what this week has in store for us. Thanks, Sheriff. Thank you guys. If anybody's interested and you want us to print more of these out, these are really responsive.