Bedlam on the beach

Gunshots, crowds running for cover, two dead and a curfew all dominated headlines over the last weekend, but all was calm on Miami Beach when Shirley Plantin, Miami-Dade County Community Relations Board director, went out to observe the spring break crowds two weekends ago with the city’s Goodwill Ambassadors.

“Friday night, I think kind of shocked all of us. The amount of young people that were on the beach just took us for a loop,” Plantin reported back to her CRB colleagues at the agency’s monthly meeting last week. “On Saturday … the pictures that I got from the beach were astounding … the amount of people, you could not see the ground. But to their defense, there wasn’t a gunshot, there weren’t any fights.”

And when Plantin returned to the beach that Sunday, there was no trace of spring breakers – it was as if they had never been there, she said.

That relatively peaceful scene Plantin described turned out to be the calm before the storm, as deadly shots would ring out near Ocean Drive the following Friday night and Sunday morning, leading desperate officials to consider extensive measures such as metal detectors, safety checks and creating a single entry point to the beach.

“The reality of it is, is that we have to be able to regulate how people get into that area in order for wanding or for metal detectors to be successful,” said Miami Beach Police Chief Richard Clements during a special commission meeting to discuss preparations for spring break and crowd control at the upcoming Ultra Music Festival.

Community leaders have also proposed increasing the number of license plate readers, which currently stands at 24, to check for expired tags and stolen vehicles driven by possible perpetrators of violence.

“I think what happens a lot of the time is that people are looking for the silver bullet, the one thing that will solve everything,” said Glendon Hall, chair of the Miami Beach Black Affairs Advisory Committee. “There’s no silver bullet to this. You have to attack it from multiple fronts.”

Hall, who heads to South Beach every year with Goodwill Ambassadors meant to serve as buffers between tourists, locals and police, says a lot has already been done to address the issue. The city has implemented activations and programs to divert large crowds away from the beach and to keep young visitors out of trouble.

In previous years, he said, the license plate readers and a traffic loop have proved helpful in pulling over drivers who happen to have weapons in their cars.

“While our daytime programming has helped with crowd control and daytime incidents and arrests are down from last year,” said Mayor Dan Gelber in a public announcement, “the volume of people in our city, the unruly nature of too many and the presence of guns has created a peril that cannot go unchecked.”

Time and time again, Gelber has said he does not want spring break in Miami Beach. He stands by that again this year, looking to set measures that will discourage rowdy crowds from traveling to the area for vacation.

“We know based on the data, hotel occupancy, car rentals and everything that this weekend and next weekend are your highest-impact weekends,” Plantin said during the meeting.

Though the CRB was set on addressing a string of local issues such as public safety complaints amid racing in Ives Dairy and rising tensions between North Miami Beach’s Jewish, Haitian and Black communities, the agency was forced to shift its focus to the violence on South Beach. 

“Right now, we’re more focused on Miami Beach,” said Rene Diaz, CRB chair, explaining that the issue is now at the top of their list of community concerns. “Unfortunately there’s been a few incidents. How could they have been avoided? I don’t think anyone knows. It’s very hard when you have such large crowds of people like this.”

Analyzing the crowds

According to Miami Beach City Manager Alina Hudak, about 20% of regional schools were on spring break the week of March 4-11. The following week, roughly 41% of schools were on break from March 11-18. From March 18-25, 23%, and finally, 9% during the last weekend in the month. The percentage of schools on break in April decreases.

Officials say weekends two and three in March, when the highest number of college students go on break, is when chaos erupts on the beach each year.

Hudak said the Miami Beach Police Department uses that data to prepare for the massive crowds.

During peak weekends this year, about 470 police officers were on the streets of Miami Beach at all hours, according to Clements.

But no one could have anticipated that one of those high-impact weekends would end in separate shooting incidents that left two men dead. Miami Beach officials were left with no choice but to declare a state of emergency and issue a midnight curfew that has since been lifted.

MBPD said it would not release the identities of the victims while an investigation is ongoing but revealed that a collective four firearms were retrieved from the crime scenes.

Gelber, in a video to residents, confirmed that the deceased were visitors and not locals. One of those victims is 21-year-old Jordan Idahose from South Georgia State College.

Police have arrested 24-year-old Dontavious Polk, who is believed to have opened fire into a crowd of people walking on a sidewalk on Ocean Drive last Sunday morning, striking and killing one man. Polk, who is from Fort Lauderdale, was charged with first-degree murder.

Too little too late

Miami Beach Commissioners, who met on Monday to discuss additional safety measures voted 6-1 to close liquor stores by 6 p.m. from Thursday through Sunday of this weekend.

“Will it make us safe? I can’t answer that question, but will it help, yes,” Clements said to commissioners about the measure.

A motion to impose another midnight curfew for spring breakers did not pass, with commissioners stating that a curfew was not a long-term solution.

The mayor and others aren’t convinced closing liquor stores early will move the needle.

“I feel like someone’s bleeding profusely and you’re putting a little Band-Aid on it,” said Commissioner Steven Meiner, who reluctantly voted for the liquor store curfew.

Commissioner Ricky Arriola was the dissenting vote, saying businesses should not be punished through a measure that will not make a difference in resolving the chaos on the beach. Some business owners sided with Arriola, sharing concerns about the economic impact of closing during peak hours.

“I understand public safety is No. 1, always, but I’m struggling with putting measures for week 4 that we wish we had in [earlier weeks],” said Commissioner David Richardson. “Why do we need these draconian measures [now] when we really needed them in weekends number 3 and 2?”

Some commissioners sided with Richardson and said measures should be put in place beforehand in the future, stating this weekend’s Ultra Music Festival crowd is unproblematic, unlike spring breakers.

“What we do know now that is different from prior years is that we’ve had the same problem, year after year after year,” said Rafael Paz, city attorney. “The difference between 2021 and today is that we now have the same geographical area [with] the same problem, the same incidents, and it’s foreseeable that we are going to have the same public safety risk in the future.”

Paz said he will return with a proposal for commissioners on how to set measures in place ahead of the crowds’ arrival.

“When we tried to do this in previous years, we didn’t have a pattern … and a pattern might be able to get us over the issue of doing something beforehand,” said Gelber. “Such as measures designated to certain weekends ahead of time. When we did do this – I think it was Commissioner Fernandez’s ordinance – a court actually refused to allow us to implement it.”

No other action, aside from the early liquor store closing, was taken at the meeting.

Diaz says that every year, the CRB works closely with the police department and ambassadors to manage the issue. The result, according to him, has been a decrease in arrests each year.

“All we can do is learn from what’s happening this time and go to the drawing board, sit there and brainstorm,” said Diaz. “We see what works or what didn’t work and try to find something new to implement.”

“The biggest issue we’re seeing now is when folks come out with these firearms and cause the problems,” said Glendon, noting a decrease in arrests. “We haven’t heard of any issues dealing with excessive force this year. Even though we had these two incidents occur, a majority of the people who came down were not engaged in such activity. So there has been some progress made.”