Two police-involved shootings added to the turbulent 10-year history of Urban Beach Weekend.
For the past 10 years, the Art Deco District on South Beach has turned into a hip-hop street party during Memorial Day weekend, with a bulked up police presence monitoring hundreds of thousands of young revelers.
Monday’s early morning shootings, which resulted in one dead, four bystanders hit by stray bullets and three police officers injured, has renewed a call to replace the hip-hop themed festival with a less rowdy event — or do away with it altogether.
“There isn’t a residential street in South Beach not affected by tons of garbage, crime to our vehicles, excessive noise 24 hours a day, and simply a lack of respect for our community, citizens and property,” activist Herb Sosa wrote in an open letter to the Miami Beach City Commission. “Make the difficult but correct decision to put an end to Urban Weekend in Miami Beach.”
On Facebook, Miami Beach Commissioner Jerry Libbin supported a Memorial Day weekend curfew, which he said was proposed by City Manager Jorge Gonzalez.
“I think we need to take back the city for the residents,” said Libbin, who is also president and CEO of the Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce. “It’s just not right that people live in fear.”
After hearing about Monday’s shootings, Miami Beach resident Aaron Sugarman wrote a letter to the Miami Beach mayor and commissioners, pitching a move to replace the hip-hop themed festival with a less rowdy event featuring jazz and blues music.
At police headquarters Monday morning, Libbin also suggested the city needs to rethink the way it handles Memorial Day weekend.
He said officials should consider backing an old proposal, which has been resurrected over the last year, to create a multi-cultural concert weekend on the beach.
David Wallack, owner of Mango’s on Ocean Drive, has tried to push the event in the past with Live Nation and Gloria and Emilio Estefan, but he said he has never been able to get simultaneous support from residents, the Estefans and Live Nation.
Such proposals have been criticized in the past as veiled attempts to push out hip-hop fans.
Libbin sees it a different way: “It’s not to exclude anybody, but to be more diverse,” he said.
Violence erupted at this year’s Urban Beach Week when officers opened fire on a car heading south on Collins Avenue. Witnesses say gunshots had come from inside the vehicle, but no gun was found in the car or on the driver’s body. About an hour later, police say a man driving a gray Mercedes accelerated toward an officer, forcing her to shoot at him. The car crashed but no one was injured.
It caps a decade of turbulence of Memorial Day weekends on the Beach that has resulted in thousands of arrests, passionate complaints from residents and accusations of racial profiling.
“The unfortunate part of this has been the racial component,” said John de Leon, president of the Greater Miami Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, which monitors police during the event. “The police presence historically has seemed to heighten the tension of the event.”
In 2001, the city was caught by surprise when some 250,000 young tourists flocked to the hotels and nightclubs of South Beach for a four-day run of parties publicized heavily by New York City radio personalities.
As popular nightclubs grew overcrowded, bouncers and club goers tussled outside the velvet ropes, and police showed up in riot gear to tame the crowds in the streets. At least two people were shot with shotgun pellets.
The presence of hundreds of thousands of young partiers in urban attire shocked many neighborhood residents of Miami Beach, which has a black population of about 3,800, or 4.4. percent, according to the 2010 U.S. Census.
In the following years, Miami Beach city officials launched an action plan to prepare for the weekend, adding manpower to the police force and using electronic signs like the one that greeted motorists entering Miami Beach from the MacArthur Causeway this weekend: “Happy Memorial Day Weekend. No Open Containers. No Loud Music.”
The weekend festival turned deadly in 2004, when Malcolm Marshall, a 20-year-old from Hallandale Beach, was shot in the head through a car window as he drove toward South Beach. Police said he had been flirting with a carload of girls when he got into a verbal altercation with another driver. As he drove away, a passenger in the other car fired a shot through his window, killing him.
By 2006, police presence at the event had been bulked up significantly, with more than 600 uniformed and plain-clothes officers on patrol during the weekend. The enhanced effort led to a record 1,010 arrests, with the vast majority of the offenses for non-violent misdemeanors like public intoxication.
In 2007, a year when police recovered more than 60 firearms during the weekend, deadly gunplay occurred again, when two men were fatally shot outside of David’s Café near Lincoln Road after a fight.
“I think it’s unfortunate that every year it seems someone gets killed,” said Sugarman. “There’s glass in the streets; there’s trash in the streets. I think it’s a bad image for Miami Beach.”
For the past three years, the weekend had become less turbulent, with the number of arrests dropping to 382 last year, down from 784 in 2007. But this weekend’s shootings are likely to spark more debate about whether Urban Beach Week has overstayed its welcome on South Beach.
The debate about whether the event is good or bad for business has been a constant over the past decade. It just about fills South Beach’s hotel inventory, but some business owners say young partiers scare away their clients.
“We were not expecting this,” said Madine Wiegand, visiting from Frankfurt, Germany. “It has been loud and people have been really rude. There have been way too many people. But the weather is warm so we will definitely be coming back.”
Libbin, the commissioner, said he was actually upset about Memorial Day weekend because of four “stampedes” of people that destroyed several sidewalk cafes on Ocean Drive — something that also happened last year.
Libbin said officials believe the rush was caused because people became frightened of the large snakes some people bring out to South Beach.
Wallack said he had to shut down his sidewalk café out of safety concerns and because he lost $1,200 in walk-outs.
“There were tables everywhere,” he said. “Broken dishes. Food everywhere.”
The festival has its defenders as well, with many of them believing Urban Beach Week receives unjust criticism that may be racially motivated.
“Some of the comments that I’ve heard are really off-putting,” said de Leon, of the ACLU. “I think that if you’re a tourist community, which South Beach is, you should embrace people who are coming in, who are spending money and who are enjoying themselves.”
Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/05/30/v-fullstory/2242766/activists-ask-if-urban-week-has.html#ixzz1NyBqcW5E
For the past 10 years, the Art Deco District on South Beach has turned into a hip-hop street party during Memorial Day weekend, with a bulked up police presence monitoring hundreds of thousands of young revelers.
Monday’s early morning shootings, which resulted in one dead, four bystanders hit by stray bullets and three police officers injured, has renewed a call to replace the hip-hop themed festival with a less rowdy event — or do away with it altogether.
Watch:
“There isn’t a residential street in South Beach not affected by tons of garbage, crime to our vehicles, excessive noise 24 hours a day, and simply a lack of respect for our community, citizens and property,” activist Herb Sosa wrote in an open letter to the Miami Beach City Commission. “Make the difficult but correct decision to put an end to Urban Weekend in Miami Beach.”
On Facebook, Miami Beach Commissioner Jerry Libbin supported a Memorial Day weekend curfew, which he said was proposed by City Manager Jorge Gonzalez.
“I think we need to take back the city for the residents,” said Libbin, who is also president and CEO of the Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce. “It’s just not right that people live in fear.”
After hearing about Monday’s shootings, Miami Beach resident Aaron Sugarman wrote a letter to the Miami Beach mayor and commissioners, pitching a move to replace the hip-hop themed festival with a less rowdy event featuring jazz and blues music.
At police headquarters Monday morning, Libbin also suggested the city needs to rethink the way it handles Memorial Day weekend.
He said officials should consider backing an old proposal, which has been resurrected over the last year, to create a multi-cultural concert weekend on the beach.
David Wallack, owner of Mango’s on Ocean Drive, has tried to push the event in the past with Live Nation and Gloria and Emilio Estefan, but he said he has never been able to get simultaneous support from residents, the Estefans and Live Nation.
Such proposals have been criticized in the past as veiled attempts to push out hip-hop fans.
Libbin sees it a different way: “It’s not to exclude anybody, but to be more diverse,” he said.
Violence erupted at this year’s Urban Beach Week when officers opened fire on a car heading south on Collins Avenue. Witnesses say gunshots had come from inside the vehicle, but no gun was found in the car or on the driver’s body. About an hour later, police say a man driving a gray Mercedes accelerated toward an officer, forcing her to shoot at him. The car crashed but no one was injured.
It caps a decade of turbulence of Memorial Day weekends on the Beach that has resulted in thousands of arrests, passionate complaints from residents and accusations of racial profiling.
“The unfortunate part of this has been the racial component,” said John de Leon, president of the Greater Miami Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, which monitors police during the event. “The police presence historically has seemed to heighten the tension of the event.”
In 2001, the city was caught by surprise when some 250,000 young tourists flocked to the hotels and nightclubs of South Beach for a four-day run of parties publicized heavily by New York City radio personalities.
As popular nightclubs grew overcrowded, bouncers and club goers tussled outside the velvet ropes, and police showed up in riot gear to tame the crowds in the streets. At least two people were shot with shotgun pellets.
The presence of hundreds of thousands of young partiers in urban attire shocked many neighborhood residents of Miami Beach, which has a black population of about 3,800, or 4.4. percent, according to the 2010 U.S. Census.
In the following years, Miami Beach city officials launched an action plan to prepare for the weekend, adding manpower to the police force and using electronic signs like the one that greeted motorists entering Miami Beach from the MacArthur Causeway this weekend: “Happy Memorial Day Weekend. No Open Containers. No Loud Music.”
The weekend festival turned deadly in 2004, when Malcolm Marshall, a 20-year-old from Hallandale Beach, was shot in the head through a car window as he drove toward South Beach. Police said he had been flirting with a carload of girls when he got into a verbal altercation with another driver. As he drove away, a passenger in the other car fired a shot through his window, killing him.
By 2006, police presence at the event had been bulked up significantly, with more than 600 uniformed and plain-clothes officers on patrol during the weekend. The enhanced effort led to a record 1,010 arrests, with the vast majority of the offenses for non-violent misdemeanors like public intoxication.
In 2007, a year when police recovered more than 60 firearms during the weekend, deadly gunplay occurred again, when two men were fatally shot outside of David’s Café near Lincoln Road after a fight.
“I think it’s unfortunate that every year it seems someone gets killed,” said Sugarman. “There’s glass in the streets; there’s trash in the streets. I think it’s a bad image for Miami Beach.”
For the past three years, the weekend had become less turbulent, with the number of arrests dropping to 382 last year, down from 784 in 2007. But this weekend’s shootings are likely to spark more debate about whether Urban Beach Week has overstayed its welcome on South Beach.
The debate about whether the event is good or bad for business has been a constant over the past decade. It just about fills South Beach’s hotel inventory, but some business owners say young partiers scare away their clients.
“We were not expecting this,” said Madine Wiegand, visiting from Frankfurt, Germany. “It has been loud and people have been really rude. There have been way too many people. But the weather is warm so we will definitely be coming back.”
Libbin, the commissioner, said he was actually upset about Memorial Day weekend because of four “stampedes” of people that destroyed several sidewalk cafes on Ocean Drive — something that also happened last year.
Libbin said officials believe the rush was caused because people became frightened of the large snakes some people bring out to South Beach.
Wallack said he had to shut down his sidewalk café out of safety concerns and because he lost $1,200 in walk-outs.
“There were tables everywhere,” he said. “Broken dishes. Food everywhere.”
The festival has its defenders as well, with many of them believing Urban Beach Week receives unjust criticism that may be racially motivated.
“Some of the comments that I’ve heard are really off-putting,” said de Leon, of the ACLU. “I think that if you’re a tourist community, which South Beach is, you should embrace people who are coming in, who are spending money and who are enjoying themselves.”
Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/05/30/v-fullstory/2242766/activists-ask-if-urban-week-has.html#ixzz1NyBqcW5E
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