Violent weekend leads Miami Beach to bring back extra police, ask county for help

Back in December, Miami Beach Police launched a pilot program to pack extra police into South Beach to make the party hub safer.

Two months, 401 arrests and 22 seized guns later, the scaled-up policing plan appears to have done its job, says Kevin Green, a 60-year-old resident who has spent the last couple years chronicling the daily happenings on Ocean Drive during his walks there.

Police saturated the seaside strip. Everywhere he went, cops were arresting people, he said.

“And then boom, it stopped,” he said, “and it was hard to find an officer again on Ocean Drive.”

Following a violent weekend in South Beach that outraged residents and politicians alike — a young tourist was robbed at gunpoint and, later, three others were injured when a man opened fire outside a restaurant — Police Chief Richard Clements said he would reimpose the enhanced staffing plan to restore order in the city.

Staring down a row of TV cameras, Clements held up a photo of the suspected gunman in Sunday’s triple shooting and said residents “deserve the right to be safe here.”

“It’s our job to make that happen, and quite frankly, people like this walking our streets don’t make it safe,” he said, referring to New York resident Keshawn McLean, 24, who is now wanted for attempted murder. “We need to do a better job, and we’re going to do a better job.”

Clements said the plan will again put up to 28 more officers back on patrol in the area. The eight-week pilot program, which started in December, ended Jan. 24.

Mayor Dan Gelber, who appeared with Clements at a Monday afternoon press conference, said Miami-Dade Police will supply seven additional county officers to assist the city the next two weekends — and an additional 30 during the spring break period.

“Please don’t come here if you want to misbehave,” Gelber said. “If you have bad intentions, go somewhere else or stay home. It’s not going to be worth it for you because you will be arrested.”

Green, who owns a condominium on Collins Avenue overlooking Ocean Drive, said the city needs to make the pilot program permanent.

“They can’t let down,” he sad. “That’s got to be the standard.”

Residents outraged over string of crimes

A string of crimes began early Friday morning when a gunman targeted three young women visiting South Beach and robbed one of them near Española Way about 7 a.m. The suspect, who was later arrested, briefly chased the other women before returning to his car with a stolen purse, surveillance video shows.

On Saturday afternoon, a man who had been eating at Prime Italian on Ocean Drive was shot in the leg “when someone’s gun was fired” at the restaurant, police said. The man did not cooperate with police and signed a refusal to prosecute form.

And just before 9 p.m. Sunday, three people were shot outside The Licking restaurant at 754 Washington Ave. Cellphone video of the shooting shows a man open fire into a group of people on the street during an argument. One of the victims is in critical condition.

As news of each incident was publicized, community groups on Facebook began to swell with posts and comments from fearful — and frustrated — residents sharing news articles and videos of the incidents and lamenting what they say has been a decline in their quality of life.

They called and emailed their city commissioners to demand action.

In an email to Mayor Dan Gelber titled “war zone,” South Beach resident Tania Dean — who is a moderator of the group Miami Beach Community — asked that the city support its police in cracking down on violence.

“It is unfair to have us trapped inside our homes, afraid to go in the streets,” she wrote in the email, obtained by the Miami Herald. “The Beach is in dire straits.”

Aaron Resnick, a South of Fifth neighborhood resident, told the Miami Herald that he is fearful of the recent crime just blocks from his home.

“What has been happening in Miami Beach is terrifying,” he wrote in a private message. “If the city of Miami Beach does not act now, a lot of people will give up faith in our local government’s ability to protect not just the residents, but our visitors, businesses and the tourism industry that is the lifeblood of Miami Beach.”

The outpouring of exasperation even included State Rep. Michael Grieco, a Miami Beach resident who represents the city in the Legislature.

“Somebody is going to get killed,” he said. “It breaks my heart to watch my city and to watch South Beach continue to go in the wrong direction.”

Gelber released a statement Monday morning saying he was “sick and tired” of the crime in South Beach, and asked the city manager to “come up with measures that will have an impact in the short term.”

“I’ve asked the manager to lay out whatever it takes for short-term and long-term actions,” Gelber said. “Everything needs to be on the table. Everything.”

Mayor says party district ‘ungovernable’

Since last September, the police department has rolled out two staffing changes to better patrol the South Beach entertainment district, which the city defines as the 11-block area from Fifth to 16th streets on Ocean Drive and Collins Avenue. Nearby Washington Avenue, while technically in a different zoning district, is often lumped in with the other party strips.

“It’s time to go back to work and do it again,” Clements said. He said he would develop patrol plans to “enhance [officer] performance in terms of being at all places at all times as best we can in order to be able to deal with the expectations that our residents have.”

Gelber said the South Beach entertainment district has become so rowdy that he would not send his college-age daughters to Ocean Drive.

“I don’t send my kids to Ocean Drive,” he said. “I hate to say that, but it’s true.”

He said a beefed-up police presence, however, is not going to be enough to shake the city’s party-hard reputation, which Gelber said contributes to crime.

A divided City Commission has rejected Gelber’s proposals to roll back liquor sales on Ocean Drive or eliminate the noise exemption on the seaside strip. A watered-down noise ordinance passed Jan. 13, limiting loud noise between 9th and 11th Streets after 2 a.m.

“I’ve said this far too many times, but this district requires bold action,” Gelber said. “Those that want to respond with baby steps or incrementally need to seriously reconsider.”

Some city leaders, like Commissioners Michael Góngora and Ricky Arriola, have supported a beefed-up policing plan in South Beach as a better solution.

“The current situation is not acceptable, and we need zero tolerance towards crime and businesses that attract crime,” Góngora said in a statement. “We are currently in a midnight quarantine so an alcohol rollback at this time would not help solve our current problem.”

Góngora said he placed a discussion item on the Feb. 10 commission meeting to discuss the enhanced policing plan in the area.

At the press conference, Clements seemed to agree with Gelber on the need to “change the narrative that’s out there” that Miami Beach is a place to do whatever you want.

“I think that the men and the women of the Miami Beach Police Department are tired of it,” he said, later adding: “They’re stressed every Friday, Saturday and Sunday night about having to go out there and do the same thing over and over and over again because there are people who are just here that don’t want to [behave].”

‘Public safety is job one’

Commissioner Mark Samuelian, who has supported Gelber’s initiatives, said a combination of policy and policing is needed to address the crime issue in South Beach. He sponsored legislation restricting the use of rental scooters in the city after 7 p.m. and, along with Gelber, passed another law cracking down on sidewalk café operators who violate the city’s code of conduct.

“Public safety is job one for local government,” he said. “I do believe that we have a number of initiatives in place that are addressing these issues.”

He said he would add an item to next week’s agenda proposing more lighting in the district, along with a more robust police surveillance effort through cameras and license-plate readers.

“I want to make sure that our residents have the information that this is a priority, that we are actively addressing it and we’ve still got more to do,” Samuelian said.

Grieco said he usually doesn’t weigh in on policy discussions at the city level but felt he owed it to his family and neighbors to speak out Monday in favor of better policing in South Beach.

The former city commissioner said police are “really good at catching the bad guy. We need to exponentially improve our ability to prevent the bad guy from doing bad things in our city.”

He said he doesn’t see the connection between alcohol sales or loud music and violent crime.

“People are not getting out of their cars and shooting each other because you can hear music across the street on Ocean Drive,” he said, later adding “I think that is the wrong way to approach it. We have bad businesses with bad business models, but at the same time I think it’s a lot bigger than that.”