TYBEE ISLAND, Ga. (AP) — Thousands of black college students expected this weekend for an annual spring party at Georgia’s largest public beach will be greeted by dozens of additional police officers and barricades closing neighborhood streets. While the beach will remain open, officials are blocking access to the nearby parking lot.

Tybee Island, east of Savannah, has grappled with the April beach party known as Orange Crush since students at Savannah State University, a historically black school, started it more than 30 years ago. Residents regularly complained about loud music, trash covering the sand, and revelers urinating in yards.

Those complaints turned to fear and outrage a year ago, when record crowds estimated at more than 100,000 invaded the 4.8-kilometer (3-mile) island. That left a small police force struggling to handle an avalanche of emergency calls reporting gunshots, drug overdoses, traffic jams and fistfights.

Mayor Brian West, elected last fall by Tybee Island’s 3,100 residents, said the roadblocks are in place, adding that police are not just there to limit crowds. He hopes the crackdown will drive Orange Crush away for good.

“This has to stop. “We can’t have this crowd anymore,” West said. “My goal is to end this.”

Critics say local officials are exaggerating and appear to be singling out black visitors at a southern beach that only whites could use until 1963. They point out that Tybee Island draws large crowds during the Fourth of July and other holiday weekends. summer, when visitors are mostly white, as they are 92% of the island’s residents.

“Our weekends are packed all season long, but when Orange Crush comes they close the parking lot, bring in extra police and act like they have to take over,” said Julia Pearce, one of the island’s few black residents and leader of a group. called Tybee MLK Human Rights Organization. And she added: “They think black people are criminals.”

Throughout the week, workers set up metal barricades to block parking meters and residential streets along the main road parallel to the beach. Two large parking lots near a popular dock are being closed. And the roughly two dozen Tybee Island police officers will be joined by about 100 sheriff’s deputies, Georgia state troopers and other officers.

Security plans were influenced by tactics used last month to reduce crowds and violence in spring break in miami beachwhich was observed by the Tybee Island Police Chief.

Officials insist they are acting to prevent a repeat of last year’s Orange Crush party, which they say turned into a public safety crisis with crowds at least twice their usual size.

“To me, it has nothing to do with race,” said West, who believes city officials had previously not taken a stronger stance against Orange Crush because they feared being called racist. “We can’t let that be a reason to allow our citizens to be unsafe and we’re not.”

Tybee Island police reported 26 total arrests during Orange Crush last year. The charges included armed robbery with a firearm, four counts of public fighting and five counts of DUI. Two officers reported bottles were thrown at them, and two women told police they were beaten and a purse was stolen.

On a gridlocked highway about a mile from the island, someone fired a gun at a car, wounding one person. A white man was charged in the shooting, which authorities attributed to road rage.

Both supporters and detractors of Orange Crush say it’s not college students who cause the worst problems.

Joshua Miller, a 22-year-old senior at Savannah State University who plans to attend this weekend, said he wouldn’t be surprised if the crackdown was motivated, at least in part, by race.

“I don’t know what they have in store,” Miller said. “I’m not going down there with bad intentions. “I just go out to have fun.”

Savannah Mayor Van Johnson was one of the black Savannah State students who helped launch Orange Crush in 1988. The university stopped participating in the 1990s, and Johnson said that over time the celebration “went off the rails.” . But he also told reporters that he is concerned about the “overrepresentation of police” at the beach party.

At Nickie’s 1971 Bar & Grill near the beach, general manager Sean Ensign said many neighboring stores and restaurants will close for Orange Crush, although his will remain open and sell takeout orders like last year. But with nearby parking spaces closed, Ensign said his earnings could take a hit, “possibly a few thousand dollars.”

This isn’t the first time Tybee Island has focused on black beach partying. In 2017, the city banned alcohol and amplified music on the beach during Orange Crush weekend only. A discrimination complaint to the U.S. Department of Justice resulted in city officials signing a non-binding agreement impose uniform rules for large events.

West says Orange Crush is different because it’s promoted on social media by people who haven’t gotten permits. a new State Law allows local governments to recover public safety expenses from organizers of disallowed events.

In February, Britain Wigfall was denied a permit to have space on the island for food trucks during Orange Crush. The mayor said Wigfall has continued to promote events on the island.

Wigfall, 30, said he’s promoting a concert this weekend in Savannah, but nothing on Tybee Island involving Orange Crush.

“I don’t control it,” Wigfall said. “No one controls the date when people go down there.”