Miami Beach ,Florida , will impose a curfew from midnight to 6 a.m. beginning Thursday, officials said.- City officials have declared a state of emergency, which some critics have called an overreaction.
Miami Beach, Florida is set to impose a midnight curfew this weekend after two shootings left five people wounded amid a crowded
The curfew is set to begin at midnight on Thursday and end at 6 a.m. local time. It is currently set to expire on Monday, March 28.
City officials declared a state of emergency on Monday and announced the curfew following two separate shootings. Last weekend, a shooting on Saturday near Ocean Drive and Eighth Street left three people injured, and another shooting on Sunday, near Ocean Drive and Seventh Street, injured two more people. All five victims had non-life-threatening injuries, according to the Miami Herald.
Miami Mayor Dan Gelber said at a press conference on Monday that he, along with city officials and law enforcement, is "very frustrated and angry" by the violence.
"In the last two nights, five innocent people were shot in our streets," Gerber said. "Our city is well past its endpoint. What we are watching and what we are feeling and what are observing is simply unacceptable at every level."
The city, an annual hot spot for spring break beachgoers, has long grappled with how to address the massive crowds.
"We don't ask for spring break, we don't promote it, we don't encourage it. We just endure it," Gelber said. "And frankly it's not something we want to endure. We don't want spring break. It's just every community in Florida that has had it, has pushed it away."
A total of 100 guns were confiscated in the last four weeks, an increase from the same period last year, per the Herald.
Gelber at the press conference said the recent shootings happened "despite the fact that we had one of the most massive deployments of police resources our city really has seen." He added that there were some 371 police officers working in South Beach over the past weekend.
Miami is expected to be inundated with tourists and festival-goers in the coming weeks, starting this weekend with Miami Music Week, a sold-out Ultra Music Festival, and then Miami Beach Pride.
"We just simply cannot have people coming to our city and having to worry about being shot," Gelber said Monday.
Critics of the emergency measure say it is an overreaction targeting the city's Black visitors. A state of emergency typically requires a "clear and present danger of a riot or other general public disorder," such as a hurricane or pandemic, the Miami Herald's David Ovalle and Charles Rabin reported.
"The only emergency is that Black people are on the Beach," Stephen Hunter Johnson of Miami-Dade's Black Advisory Board told the Herald. "I don't understand how this town has been doing spring break for at least 25 years and can't figure it out."
The curfew will encompass all of South Beach, from 23 Street and Dade Boulevard on the north to Government Cut on the south, Biscayne Bay on the west to the Atlantic Ocean on the east, a map from city officials shows.
Traffic in the area may be rerouted by local police, and local businesses will have to "close sufficiently in advance of the curfew in order to permit patrons to avoid violating the curfew," according to the announcement.
Around the same time last year, Miami Beach imposed a Thursday to Sunday curfew to address the crowds of spring breakers that annually flock to South Beach. In 2021, the city implemented an 8 p.m. curfew that included closing the main road, Ocean Drive. Police previously used pepper balls to disperse crowds along the drive amid incidents of property damage.
During the curfew, police made over 1,000 arrests of people — more than half of whom were from out of state — who the city manager said were engaging in "lawlessness and an anything goes party attitude."
The 2021 curfew was extended incrementally had been in effect for several weeks until early April 2021.
Michael Grieco, a democrat in Florida's House of Representatives, called the curfew an "embarrassing government overreach."
"This is infuriating. Punishing local businesses because the city forgot that spring break is in March, every year," Grieco said in a tweet.
—Michael Grieco (@Mike_Grieco) March 22, 2022