Miami Beach is taking a more aggressive strategy to manage this year’s large spring break crowds with teams of police officers in riot police gear patrolling the beach, the streets of the famous Ocean Drive district and its vicinity.
Miami Beach is a destination for world tourism that in March is filled with university students from all over the United States. This month, the excesses reached the point that the authorities promised to spoil the party by patrolling the beach with riot police.
In addition, the police now promises to stop turning a blind eye when bathers drink alcohol on the beach or marijuana flavors invade the sea air.
“It’s spring break, people do not care about anything,” said Jack Rogers, an 18-year-old student at Towson University in Maryland who was sitting on an oceanfront street with his friends.
“You’re here to have fun,” he told AFP. “But obviously people are out of control.”
On calm days, the coast of Miami Beach usually has more seagulls than people.
But the police estimate that last weekend there were between 3,000 and 6,000 people on the badly wounded beach of white sand and turquoise water.
At nightfall, the crowd moves to Ocean Drive, the coastal promenade lined with outdoor restaurants that during the “happy hour” sell cocktails of up to a liter and a half.
Result: in the mornings, the tropical heat enhances the smell of urine that remains attached in the alleys.
Videos that went viral show a driver serving alcohol to the passengers of another vehicle in high traffic and a woman hit in the face by a man in the middle of a street brawl.
These incidents show the atmosphere in which Maria Michelle Logan, a Chicago tourist, died early Sunday morning. On the highway to the airport, still in a festive mood, the 23-year-old fell off the car in motion as she hung out of the window shouting “Goodbye Miami!”
They were her last words.
This tragedy, plus the images of stampedes and twentysomethings from a funnel, woke up the authorities who met emergency on Tuesday and agreed on a plan for next weekend, the last of the so-called “spring break”.
“We have to eliminate this ‘spring break’ phenomenon as soon as possible,” commissioner John Elizabeth Alemán said at the meeting. “We have to make it much less fun, unfortunately, for that kind of tourism.”
– Do not leave on probation –
“Having fun is something that can not be prohibited,” Marta RamÃrez, a 70-year-old resident, told AFP. “But they should have a little more respect. Let them dance and enjoy, but with order. “
The slogan of the police “Come on vacation, do not leave on probation,” was not enough deterrent.
Nor did a letter sent in November by Police Chief Daniel Oates to fraternities and university fraternities across the country: “If you come to Miami Beach in spring break, you must obey our laws. Otherwise, they will be arrested. “
At the town hall meeting there was even talk of implementing a curfew. Finally, the commissioners did not go that far, but they promised energetic measures.
Since Thursday, police in riot gear, followed by officers on four-wheeled “quad” motorcycles, began to walk the beach confiscating alcohol.
The residential area of ​​the island will be closed with barriers during this weekend, there will be an officer deployed in each corner of Ocean Drive, a system for reading car license plates will be installed, techniques will be implemented to disperse crowds and undercover officers will mix with the crowd.
“This is not a place where everything is accepted,” Mayor Dan Gelber said in a statement Thursday. “If that’s the reason you have to come, then go somewhere else.”
It is still early to estimate how many people visited Miami Beach in March. According to Gelber, this city of 90,000 inhabitants receives 14 million tourists annually.
That is to say, when the “spring break” ends, the beautiful beach of Miami Beach will once again be its residents and the seagulls … until the next long weekend.
