Miami Beach will extend emergency
Measure authorizes curfew amid disorder
Miami Beach plans to extend a state of emergency for the entertainment district to control spring break crowds.
The extension, expected to be announced Tuesday, will authorize a curfew Thursday night through early Monday that will be eligible for extension every week through April 13, Melissa Berthier, spokesperson for the city of Miami Beach, told USA TODAY. The state of emergency was declared Saturday.
“The City Commission has authorized the interim city manager to extend the declaration of a state of emergency in one-week increments through April 13, 2021,” the city said in a release Sunday, which included updates to the curfew rules.
Miami Beach Police said more than 1,000 people have been arrested this spring break season, and about 80 guns have been seized. Police Chief Richard Clements said the trouble intensified last Monday when an unusually large crowd blocked Ocean Drive “and basically had an impromptu street party.” By Thursday, fights were breaking out, setting off dangerous stampedes to safety.
There is simply too much disorder for the Miami Beach Police Department to handle, Mayor Dan Gelber told USA TODAY on Saturday.
“The problem is there’s a few things happening simultaneously,” Gelber said. “We’ve got too many people and too many looking to act out while there’s a pandemic going on.”
Interim City Manager Raul Aguila said many people from other states were coming in “to engage in lawlessness and an ‘anything goes’ party attitude.” He said most weren’t patronizing the businesses that badly need tourism dollars and instead were merely congregating by the thousands in the street.
The amended state of emergency is expected to be in effect on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights until April 13. It will limit traffic on three causeways leading to South Beach in an effort to keep all but residents, hotel guests and employees from driving onto the island. In addition, it imposes a curfew in the entertainment district of Miami Beach from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. and closes sidewalk dining from 7 p.m. through 6 a.m.
Tourists might be “a little disappointed,” Gelber told USA TODAY on Monday, but that’s not his main concern. “At the end of the day, I’ve got to follow a public health and safety directive,” he said. “If we could have wellbehaved tourists in the evening, it’d be great, but we haven’t had that.”
“It’s fever-pitched,” Angus Thomas, a British photographer who has been stuck in Miami Beach because of COVID-19 travel restrictions, told USA TODAY. This isn’t Thomas’ first spring break in Miami; he was in the city two years ago but said the atmosphere this year is much different.
“People are coming off the plane on $65 return flights, and they are exploding into Miami,” he said. Some travel companies have offered pandemic deals to lure visitors. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is still advising Americans to avoid nonessential travel.
Thomas walked around the entertainment district Saturday evening before the 8 p.m. curfew kicked in. He said he saw many people carrying open containers of alcohol, but the people he photographed weren’t aware of the upcoming curfew. He found out about the curfew from a friend.
The crowd in the entertainment district was defiant but mostly nonviolent on Saturday night, refusing to submit to the curfew that had been enacted only four hours earlier, when officers in bulletproof vests released pepper spray balls to break up the party, according to The Associated Press. A curfew-defying crowd showed up again Sunday night.