The city of Miami Beach has decided to impose a nightly curfew this weekend to stem a wave of gun violence during Spring Break, the spring break that draws thousands of people to southern Florida each year.
Local authorities made that decision on Monday, after two shootings left five injured in that southeastern US city in recent days.
“We can't take it anymore,” said Mayor Dan Gelber when announcing the measure. “We didn't ask for the 'Spring Break'. We don't promote it. We don't encourage it. We just put up with it and, frankly, it's not something we want to endure,” he said.
This curfew, which encompasses the busiest area of Miami Beach, including the famous Ocean Drive promenade, will last between midnight and 06:00 local, from Wednesday to Sunday morning.
The City Council will meet this Tuesday to discuss other possible emergency measures and has already made it known that it plans to renew the curfew next week.
In 2021, Miami Beach imposed the same measure and banned the sale of alcohol in bars after 2 AM, following incidents in which police had arrested more than 1,000 people for street fights and riots.
To prevent the same from happening this year, the Police increased the number of troops deployed in the most visited areas of the city, which are concentrated in its southernmost neighborhood, South Beach.
Since the “Spring Break” began, officers seized 37 firearms in three days, local police chief Richard Clements said Monday.
Every year, in spring, a crowd of young people, especially students, come to Florida for a few days of continuous and uncontrolled fun.
These parties, with high alcohol consumption, are part of the collective imagination of generations of students but, in recent years, the local population seems increasingly upset by the situation, despite the contribution it makes to the local economy.
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