Spring break crackdown underway before the fun begins

By Johania Charles Miami Times Staff Writer

On February 7, 2024

Miami Beach’s first Black chief challenged to keep the peace

Year after year, the Miami Beach Commission grapples with managing massive crowds on the beach during spring break and the violence and disorder that often follow. This year is no different.

Commissioners voted last week in favor of enacting strict measures, including midnight curfews, 6 p.m. beach closures and lane closures during two high-impact weekends in March, if necessary.

Alina Hudak, city manager ,would need to declare a state of emergency for the midnight curfews to go into effect.

“We mean business,” said Miami Beach Mayor Steven Meiner, echoing the same sentiments as his predecessor. “We need to correct these issues and we need to do it now. If somebody thinks that we’re doing too much then that means we’re probably doing it right.”

Starting next month, Miami Beach Police Department officers, joined by Florida Highway Patrol and Miami-Dade officers, will work 12-hour shifts, and vehicle towing costs will double to more than $500.

“The plan we have in place has been vetted up and down with my senior staff, have been spoken to with the city manager, city senior leaders and administration,” said Miami Beach Police Chief Wayne Jones at the meeting. “We’re very, very comfortable with it and confident that if implemented the way we’d like to implement it, it will make a positive difference this year.”

MBPD says its first Black chief was unavailable for an interview with The Miami Times on this subject due to prior commitments.

“We know that we had some really serious incidents that we had to deal with here in the last couple of years,” said Gov. Ron DeSantis while at a Monday press conference in Miami Beach.

City officials also proposed bringing back license plate readers on the MacArthur and Julia Tuttle causeways this year, expanding DUI checkpoints, requesting that Miami-Dade County close off access to the Venetian Causeway, hiking municipal parking up to $100 for all drivers except city residents, business owners and employees, and closing parking garages at 6 p.m. during the high-impact weekends.

According to the city, these weekends – when the highest number of college students are expected to go on break – are March 8 through March 10 and March 15 through March 17.

“The incidents that have happened, it tarnishes our brand and it’s literally just a couple of blocks on Ocean Drive,” said Meiner. “People who hear this news internationally think that Miami Beach is sort of in some kind of party zone that’s unsafe, and that’s not true.”

The measures, which prompted long discussions between commissioners last Wednesday, are meant to deter 2024 spring breakers from flocking to Miami Beach and recreating the same chaotic scenes from prior years. At least five items on last week’s commission agenda were related to spring break.

“We fail to take tough decisions in advance,” said Commissioner Alex Fernandez, who sponsored the bulk of the spring break items. “What we end up seeing happen is the same pattern of people outnumbering our police, stampedes, shootings, deaths, national headlines followed by [a] state of emergency and curfew. Data tells us year after year there are two weekends in March that we’re going to have a certain set of unruly, unlawful, dangerous behavior.”

Commissioners will meet again Feb. 21 to finalize plans for handling crowds next month.

Last year, Miami Beach declared a state of emergency after two deadly shootings, dozens of guns were seized and close to 490 arrests were made, according to Miami Beach Police. Though about 470 police officers were on the streets of Miami Beach at all hours last year, chaos in the form of two execution-style murders, beach brawls and individuals jumping on cars ensued.

At least eight shootings in Miami Beach were reported in 2022 during spring break and four the year prior, according to the city.

Glendon Hall, chair of the Miami Beach Black Affairs Advisory Committee, which met Tuesday morning to discuss spring break preparations, told The Miami Times that his group is seeking clarity on what events would prompt a state of emergency.

“What is that threshold, what will have to happen for [Hudak] to do that?” he said. “We have fought very strongly against any zero tolerance policing policy which has been instituted by mayors and commissioners [in the past], and no pepper balls or canines for crowd control. We’ve made some progress in that sense.”

Hall says confusion about which policies will go into effect and when may jeopardize the Goodwill Ambassador’s peace-keeping efforts in a city that has been criticized for treatment of Black tourists during spring break. The Goodwill Ambassadors is a program the current chief developed years ago to act as a buffer between police and area visitors.

“The big issue is that the messaging is not getting out there correctly … The word is not clear that [midnight curfews and beach closures] will happen only if a state of emergency is declared.”

Hall said there’s miscommunication between what occurred at the commission meeting, what some media outlets are reporting and what the community believes could hurt the city’s chances of properly handling its ongoing spring break issue with little incident.

“I don’t want our first Black chief in the history of the city to be set up to fail, for our MBPD to be set up to fail, because we need support from all different agencies,” he said. “The city needs to do a better job [communicating] with its partners about what the restrictions are and when they would be enacte

This piece was republished from the Miami Times Online.