Miami Beach officials are scrambling to come up with meaningful solutions after another violent spring break highlighted its struggle to control the influx of visitors and the lawlessness some of them bring.
Months of planning and a police presence described by the mayor as “enormous” were no match for the throngs of college students and other young adults who made the annual pilgrimage to the beachfront city.
Two people were fatally shot in recent days, incidents that prompted Miami Beach to declare a state of emergency and enforce a curfew for the third year in a row.
While spring break is an economic boon to the city’s businesses, Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber said he has had enough and thinks it is time for the city to take decisive action before more lives are lost.
“We’re not going to arrest our way out of it. We’re going to have to just stop spring break from happening here. That’s the best thing we can do,” he said.
However, “that’s just a very hard thing to do,” Gelber added.
Police are ‘outnumbered’
Each March, tens of thousands of people flock to Miami Beach to take in Florida’s sunshine and party.
The city offers them a lineup of programs that includes concerts and athletic tournaments — alternatives to the traditional drinking and street cruising that occurs along iconic Ocean Drive. It also brings in police from other jurisdictions in an attempt to keep visitors safe.
“No one takes a day off during spring break. They’re all here. We have officers from the county, from other cities, officers on horseback, officers on ATVs, sometimes school district police are here. We have goodwill ambassadors walking around in shirts to try to help people follow the rules and make good choices,” Gelber said.
During peak days, there are as many as 470 officers out on the streets and yet there were more than 320 arrests before the state of emergency was declared Sunday, officials said.
Police are “outnumbered by a lawless crowd that just can’t be…
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