Miami Beach curfew after weekend of "spring break" shootings

Miami Beach, this Monday.

© Ivonne Malaver/EFE
Miami Beach, this Monday.

The city of Miami Beach (Florida, USA) declared this Monday the state of emergency and imposed curfew to counteract riots over the weekend that left five people injured by gunshots in the middle of Spring Break. The curfew will go into effect from this Thursday and will continue until Monday, and it will be between 12 in the morning and six in the morning, As the city administrator specified this Monday at a press conference, Alina Hudak, who added that the measure will be applied in the portion of the city that goes from 23rd Street to its southern limit. The official pointed out that she will sign an emergency order for this weekend’s curfew, while for next weekend she will make a formal request to the plenary session of the Miami Beach Commission (Council), which he hopes will come out ahead. “Our city has passed its final stop,” said the alcalde de Miami Beach, Dan Gelber, who lamented the number of police resources that the authorities have been forced to deploy. “We don’t want Spring Break here, but people keep coming,” lamented Gelber, who confessed that he does not have the authority to close the elevated highways that connect it with the neighboring city of Miami, as a preventive measure. In his turn, the local police chief, Richard Clements, pointed out that in the last four weeks the troops of this dependency have seized more than a hundred firearms, of which 75 corresponded to last weekend, considered the equator of Spring Break. This announcement comes after two women were shot in the early hours of Monday morning in a shooting that occurred on the popular street of Ocean Drive, on the beachfront and populated with Art Déco buildings that represent this city neighboring Miami on tourist posters. The two women, who had to be referred to a local hospital although without presenting a risk, joined three other people who were admitted early on Sunday for gunshot wounds. The busy Ocean Drive and its surroundings, full of bars and discotheques, They have been for a few weeks the meeting point for hundreds of young people who spend their spring vacations in this tourist city in South Florida, and where these days its authorities have redoubled security. After the disorders of the last year, in which one person was killed and more than a thousand arrested, In addition to the seizure of drugs and a hundred firearms, local authorities were forced to decree a curfew. In addition to increasing police presence in high-traffic areas, the city’s mayor, Dan Gelber, has prohibited from March 7 to 21 to sell and consume alcoholic beverages in Miami Beach starting at 2 in the morning. Traditionally, the weekend following the Saint Patrick’s day (March 17) is when most springbreakers arrive.