Broward lifts nightly curfew
Move comes with aggressive effort to ticket order violators
Broward County’s nighttime curfew is over, but the move comes with a more aggressive effort to ticket anyone who violates coronavirus orders.
The county lifted its curfew Monday and arranged for a new team of code enforcement inspectors to start hitting the streets. These inspectors will fan out to catch people having big parties, not wearing masks or committing other violations.
The extra help comes through a $75,000 contract with Fort Lauderdalebased Calvin, Giordano & Associates, which will send the code enforcers to restaurants opening after hours, crowds gathering in parking lots or revelers partying at vacation rentals.
Restaurants in Broward are still shut down for onsite dining from 10 p.m. until 5 a.m. And the city of Fort Lauderdale, for example, has asked for reinforcement from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. to make sure restaurants are closed.
Calvin, Giordano & Associates, which already handles code enforcement for cities such as Pompano Beach, will work mostly on nights and weekends to supplement daytime city code workers, although they will do random daytime checks at places such as gyms. They’ve been given county T-shirts, IDs and ticket books.
They have the power to issue citations but won’t engage with angry members of the public and will call police instead.
The money to pay for the new, temporary code officers will come from the county’s $340.7 million cut in federal aid in the fight against the COVID-19 crisis. The money has to be spent by Dec. 31.
Calvin, Giordano & Associates is charging $70 an hour, and the workers are sent to cities who ask for help, usually a dozen cities each day, and are often short-staffed, said Lenny Vialpando, the county’s director of environmental protection and growth management.
“The demand fluctuates,” he said. “It comes up fairly on the fly.”
Broward didn’t explain the reasons for ending its curfew, other than to say that this new push with code enforcement could be
a better approach to curb the virus’ spread.
Other curfews continue across South Florida, including in Miami-Dade County, which has a countywide curfew in effect from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. Palm Beach County doesn’t have one countywide, though it requires all restaurants to close at 11 p.m.
Three lawsuits have been filed to challenge various aspects of Broward County’s emergency orders, including the curfew. Because of the pending litigation, Andrew J. Meyers, Broward’s attorney, said his office could not comment.
Broward Mayor Dale Holness would say only that the county’s decision to end its curfew was a joint decision by the county attorney and county administrator.
“If we kept it in place we could go a lot further,” he acknowledged of the curfew. “But we’re not sure. There’s no science to say it would have.
“When we’re restricting people’s movements, we have to be cautious and take measured steps. However, if these parties continue, and we see … the spreading of the virus as a result, then we’ll take action and put the curfew back in place.”
Broward County Administrator Bertha Henry said the contract — for 1,100 hours of code enforcement — will let the county assess whether it will need to reinstate the curfew. “We’ll be watching every day; we’ll get a report in from code folks,” Henry said. “If people start up again, we’ll put it back in place.”
The county’s most recent curfew had been enacted July 17, and officials recently extended it to last through this past weekend before it expired Monday.
It was the second time that Broward County enacted a nightly curfew within a couple months; there was one that lasted three nights in early June, as protests were underway across the country over the death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minnesota police officer.
In March, several South Florida cities, including Coconut Creek and Hallandale Beach, imposed curfews to help stop the spread of the coronavirus.
Florida posted 4,752 new cases of COVID-19 on Monday, an unusually low number likely skewed by the closure of testing sites last week for Tropical Storm Isaias. There were 73 new deaths, bringing the total to 7,279, according to the Florida Department of Health, which posts daily updates.
On Sunday, White House coronavirus task force leader Dr. Deborah Birx said the country was in a ‘new phase’ of the COVID-19 pandemic.