Keeping The Peace During Spring Break

Miami FL

09 March, 2022

2:03 PM

Description

By Bianca Marcof Miami Times Staff Writer (Bianca Marcof for The Miami Times) (Bianca Marcof for The Miami Times) (Bianca Marcof for The Miami Times) (Bianca Marcof for The Miami Times) (Bianca Marcof for The Miami Times) (Bianca Marcof for The Miami Times) (Bianca Marcof for The Miami Times) (Bianca Marcof for The Miami Times) (Bianca Marcof for The Miami Times) (Bianca Marcof for The Miami Times), the Miami Times Mar 8, 2022 Signs all around the beach ask visitors to abide by local laws and regulations. (Bianca Marcof for The Miami Times) It's been a year since spring break celebrations in Miami Beach got so out of control that the city declared a state of emergency, imposed an 8 p.m. curfew, made thousands of arrests and had pepper balls fired into large crowds by police. The city is now bracing itself again for one of its busiest seasons, as visitors and locals descend upon Ocean Drive this month, from restricting alcohol sales to amping up enforcement of measures meant to curb overeager partiers. But at the request of the city's Black leaders, it's being more welcoming in its approach through a new marketing campaign – "Take Care of Your City and It Will Take Care of You." Signs placed all over the beach promoting the slogan feature a list of local laws to follow along with a scannable QR code that leads to a webpage for the initiative. As part of the campaign, the website features local influencers like DJ Irie and Romero Britto, who share tips on safety and recommend popular areas to visit. "The Black Affairs Advisory Committee made various recommendations," said Glendon Hall, it chairman. "There were specific things that we had to address [about] the issues that were occurring." This included more programming to disperse crowds and give rise to a more family-friendly environment through entertainment, which the city implemented this year with a Miami Beach Live! concert series, and reinforcing the kind of policing that will be taking place, considering longtime criticism of police crackdowns on largely Black crowds during spring break. People flock to Miami Beach March 5 to celebrate spring break. (Bianca Marcof for The Miami Times) Hall was on Ocean Drive last year when he saw a Coral Gables SWAT truck the same day the city went on to impose its 8 p.m. curfew. He saw officers come out of the vehicle with rifles and claimed nothing was happening that would precipitate the need for an armored vehicle, and one from another city agency. He says zero-tolerance policing – like some city leaders and residents have called for – is not a practice of Miami Beach PD, which needs to be effectively communicated to the public. "The messaging and the words matter. We want strategic enforcement, but what we don't want is a tolerance strategy that historically has hurt Blacks and minorities and created additional distrust in the community," Hall said. "When you set the improper tone, [then] people feel like it's open season." Reynaldo "Ronnie" Faust behind the bar at his Lincoln Road burger joint, Fat Ronnie's. (Bianca Marcof for The Miami Times) Officer Ernesto Rodriguez, a spokesperson for Miami Beach PD, said a quote he heard last year resonated with him: "We do not police people, we police behavior." "So the behavior that is exhibited – from a white person, Black person, gay person, female, Brown, Cuban, Asian – that behavior is what's going to dictate what that response is. We're engaging with people," he said. "We're going to put forth the best practices to deal with different issues. Whether it be crowd mitigation, whether it be people drinking too much. We're prepared to address them and adapt to them in the safest way possible." So far, everything seems to be running smoothly. "I'd label it a successful spring break. It has been relatively quiet. We've had no major incidents that jump out at me," Rodriguez said. At Fat Ronnie's, a full bar is hidden behind a "Meat Locker" wall. (Bianca Marcof for The Miami Times) He's been out in the field the last two weeks. But despite not finding anything that resembles last year's mayhem, Rodriguez said police are still prepared for large crowds that may act in a way they wouldn't if they were back home, and part of that includes sufficient staffing to have officers as a visible deterrent for criminal activity. Miami Beach PD, a department comprised of about 400 officers, is moving toward longer shifts to maximize the presence of officers and has even looked to the county to borrow additional law enforcement personnel – 26 Miami-Dade County officers are currently assisting the department. Additional eyes & ears on streets And while police ramp up their efforts to keep the peace over the busy month, 100 volunteers with the city and county's Goodwill Ambassador Program have also been deployed to the beach to assist them. "Miami Made me do it!" reads a sign at Call Me Cuban on Ocean Drive. (Bianca Marcof for The Miami Times) Wearing identifiable blue and pink T-shirts with messages such as, "Vacation Responsibly," these ambassadors make sure to intervene in certain scenarios to avoid getting police involved, whether it's informing beachgoers about newly imposed ordinances or monitoring crowds. They're trained in crowd control, mediation and crisis management. "We're that bridge between police and civilians," said Reginald Hires, an ambassador with the county for 15 years. Although Hires is in a more administrative role this time around, he's been assigned to every spot in the city that one can think of. "You don't want to pull away resources to deal with some things that we handle," Hires continued. The Cardozo Hotel houses Call Me Cuban and Estefan Kitchen Express. (Bianca Marcof for The Miami Times) Someone walking around with a glass bottle of liquor seen by an ambassador would be warned that an officer can confiscate it or have them pour it out if they don't take it back to their hotel room, for example. More extreme cases include being on the lookout to help people who may be dehydrated, or those who are inebriated and are being followed by someone, go into residential areas or pass out. It is then that ambassadors alert police to handle the situation since they are not allowed to come into physical contact with anyone. "We can look back on a lot of lives we've saved," Hires said. "It's all because you're looking at a person and that person doesn't look right. And a lot of people will walk by the situation instead of addressing the situation, and that's why we're here." Saving lives and helping others is what keeps him coming back, even with what happened last year, which many, including Hires, believe was caused by pent-up aggression from the pandemic. Unlike last spring break, there is no local mask mandate in effect this time. An appetite for hiring As more and more people crowd the beach two years after the start of the pandemic, restaurant owners in the region say they expect to bounce back. Reginald Hires, a longtime Miami-Dade County goodwill ambassador, poses for a photo at the Art Deco welcome center, where volunteers for the county program meet. (Bianca Marcof for The Miami Times) "I'm a very new business, but I've been on the beach for decades so I'm excited about this spring break," said Reynaldo "Ronnie" Faust, owner of create-your-own burger joint Fat Ronnie's. "Things for a while were getting a little crazy and uncontrollable and so something had to be done." The Lincoln Road spot – a Black-owned family business – offers customers choices of nearly 30 toppings on its signature Black Angus beef patties. It opened in March of 2020, with the grand opening trailing just days before establishments throughout the country had temporarily shut down. For Faust, it was a no-brainer bringing the restaurant to South Florida after the success of his first eatery of the same name in Martha's Vineyard Island in Massachusetts. "It was tough," he recalled. "The first nine months we were open, my bar was shut completely. You couldn't even sit at the bar. Not even just to have a burger. And we have a full bar so that was rough." Coming from five generations of burger makers (his grandmother was the first Black female butcher in the nation), he says he's still in the throes of building momentum here, and is expecting at least a 10% increase in sales compared to the previous months due to the large crowds of spring breakers in the region. However, like others, he's facing staffing shortages across the board at his restaurant. "I'd love to hire a few more people to help with that influx of people that are going to be visiting Miami Beach, but we've had such a hard time staffing during COVID [and] after COVID," he said. "There's such a tightness in the labor market where we're really having a hard time filling in." Miami Beach goodwill ambassadors keep watch across from the Clevelander Hotel. (Bianca Marcof for The Miami Times) A restaurant serving Cuban cuisine on Ocean Drive located right on Gloria and Emilio Estefan's Cardozo South Beach Hotel – Call Me Cuban by the James Beard award-winning Yuca – has also felt the sting of a staffing shortage in the midst of serving large groups of customers every day. But the main issue has been finding permanent employees. "Right now, we're good," said restaurant manager Leandro Gonzalez, "We don't know what to expect, really. All I know is that we'll have a lot of servers in here just in case we get packed." He explained that the restaurant may find that a lot of immigrants, primarily from Argentina, have visitor visas looking for jobs in the area, but they're only here temporarily. By the time the restaurant has spent time and energy training them to get them where they need to be, they're unable to stay. Just as in the windows of Fat Ronnie's, there are "Now Hiring" signs posted all over Call Me Cuban, alerting passersby that they're needed. The Miami Times spoke to employees who worked at several different restaurants in Miami Beach on background to see where other establishments stood with staffing. All recounted that they have been able to recruit people who have been wanting to work in the meantime that can handle crowds, but it's difficult to retain employees. Miami Beach police officers patrol along Ocean Drive March 5. (Bianca Marcof for The Miami Times) Establishments also note serving few locals. "I guess people are a little skeptical with Ocean Drive," Gonzalez said. "The city is trying to take it back to the good times when it was not so much about the entertainment and more about the culture, and I think that's where they want us to go. And we're trying to offer really good food, a really good experience rather than, I don't know, dancers and music and all that; things that could bring a different type of crowd." Gonzalez said rollback on what time alcohol sales must cease doesn't bother him. "We usually close way before that," he said. "As soon as the street dies, we close." Last week, a judge granted Ocean Drive's Clevelander Hotel a temporary injunction to block Miami Beach's ban on alcohol sales after 2 a.m. between March 7-21. The change applies to all businesses south of 16th Street. Last call is at 5 a.m. People strolling on Ocean Drive. (Bianca Marcof for The Miami Times) "I was disappointed, but that's not the beginning and end of our effort," Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber said about the decision. "We're in the midst of putting a much larger ordinance [together] in response to the 2 a.m. rollback. That will be put in place pretty soon and then we'll see what happens." Faust, whose speakeasy bar is "hidden" behind a wall that reads, "Meat Locker," said the traffic on his side of the street is dead by midnight. Compared to other restaurants and bars, his place shuts down pretty early. "I'll be honest with you, two o'clock in the morning is more than enough time for you to get your groove on and enjoy yourself. Anything after two o'clock, you're up to no good," Faust laughed. Regardless of Miami Beach bracing for unruly crowds, Gelber said that an overwhelming amount of visitors who come down are actually very well behaved. "What happens is that when you have 40, 50,000 people in a small area, what percent needs to be a little bit out of control for the whole place to be out of control?" he said. "We always have that challenge of dealing with the outliers of a group that tends to define the group." The Miami Times is the largest Black-owned newspaper in the south serving Miami's Black community since 1923. The award-winning weekly is frequently recognized as the best Black newspaper in the country by the National Newspaper Publishers Association.