Miami Beach opened up, revelers quickly faced crackdown
MIAMI BEACH — They were invited. So they came.
After a year of mostly staying inside, a mix of college students on spring break and tourists, by the tens of thousands, descended on Miami Beach, a vacation hot spot that — along with the rest of Florida — has lifted most COVID-19 restrictions, opening its restaurants and clubs and bars.
The huge crowds that gathered in the city’s famous 10-block beachside entertainment district starting in late February became unruly at times, with fights breaking out and gunshots fired into the air, causing stampedes.
In the weeks since, more than 1,000 people have been arrested, a third or more on drug and alcohol consumption charges. The police have seized more than 100 guns. And there has been some violence; in perhaps the most serious case, two male visitors are accused of drugging and raping a woman who later died.
But the raucous partying wasalso, by and large, nonviolent, city officials said. For that reason, many Black leaders in town have questioned whathappened next.
Last week, the city declared a state of emergency. A few hours later, a militarystyle armored vehicle and police officers in riot gear moved down Ocean Drive, blaring sound cannons and firing pepper balls to disperse the crowds and enforce the new curfew.
The resulting footage of heavily armed police officers cracking down on unarmed crowds reminded many people of last summer’s protests against police brutality, prompting local Black leaders to criticize Miami Beach city officials for being poorly prepared for the chaos and unnecessarily heavy-handed in their response. The city has been accused of racism before in its handling of large Black crowds, particularly during Memorial Day weekends over the years.
“This felt like a total overreaction,” said Stephen Hunter Johnson, chair of the Miami-Dade Black Affairs Advisory Board. “Of course their job is to make sure people are safe and to deal with unruly behavior, but why do they handle Black tourists so aggressively?”
He continued: “I think people see these large crowds of young Black people, and there is anger and the sense that something must be done. We want our people to be treated the same as anyone else, not better or worse.”
Mr. Johnson also said that similar partying by white tourists in another spring break locale, South Padre Island in Texas, had not brought a similar police crackdown.
The mayhem — largely maskless revelers blowing off steam after months of lockdown, followed by sudden restrictions and police enforcement — also provides a cautionary tale for other tourist havens that are moving swiftly to reopen. That the partyers were mostly Black brought added scrutiny of race and policing in the post-George Floyd era.
“Right now, Miami Beach is at the intersection of COVID, race, policing and its own history,” said Marvin Dunn, a longtime Miami historian and a retired university professor. “I would imagine other cities opening are looking at what happened here.”
Dan Gelber, the mayor of Miami Beach, said he understood the fraught optics of over-policing of African Americans, especially in the wake of the police killing of Floyd last year and the nationwide racial reckoning that followed.
But he said the police response was a reasonable strategy for clearing the streets and that he trusted the decisions of police leaders who were dealing with swelling crowds and at least a few serious troublemakers. The strenuous police response, he said, was not caused by typical springbreak antics.
“We did not target race; we targeted conduct,” he said. “... We’ve had gunplay, where people shoot up in the air and hundreds or thousands of people start storming in fear.”
This is the second spring break season shaped largely by the pandemic. Last year, cities had to close beaches in mid-Marchas COVID-19 cases soared and public health experts warned the close gatherings were primed to become superspreader events.
This year, hundreds of universities canceled spring break to discourage students from traveling. Waves of college students and somewhat older vacationers flocked to Florida anyway, creating some of the largest crowds in recent memory.
In the case of the woman who died, two North Carolina men have been charged with drugging and raping the 24-year-old from Pennsylvania and stealing her credit cards. She was later found dead in her Miami Beach hotel room.