Partying sees Miami act to cut virus risk

Authorities in Miami Beach have extended its state of emergency that could run through the end of the college spring break as police seek to control unruly crowds descending on the party strip in the Florida city.

Police have arrested more than 1,000 people and seized about 80 guns.

Commissioners on Sunday authorized the city manager Raul Aguila to keep the emergency in place.

A city spokeswoman told AFP on Monday that the extension will come in one week increments.

"How many more things are we going to allow to occur before we step in?" Miami Beach Police Chief Richard Clements told an emergency meeting of the Miami Beach City Commission on Sunday to vote to enact several measures－including extending the curfew until at least April 12－to curb the crowds. "I think this was the right decision," he said.

"When hundreds of people are running through the streets panicked, you realize that's not something that a police force can control," he said at a commission meeting on Sunday.

Clements said that on March 15, an unusually large crowd blocked Ocean Drive, the main beachfront strip, "and basically had an impromptu street party".Fights were breaking out, setting off dangerous stampedes to safety, he said.

He said one restaurant was "turned upside down" in a melee, its "chairs were used as weapons", and broken glass covered the floor. Gunshots were fired, and a young woman was hospitalized with a cut leg, police said.

The crowd was defiant but mostly nonviolent on Saturday night, refusing to submit to a curfew that had been enacted only four hours earlier, when officers in bulletproof vests released pepper spray balls to break up a party.

On Saturday, interim city manager Raul Aguila imposed the nighttime curfew on the most touristy streets of South Beach, the center of the party, and ordered the closure of the three bridges that connect the island with Miami from 10 pm to 6 am. A crowd showed up again on Sunday night, defying the curfew once more.

Lawlessness rife

Aguila said that many people from other US states were coming in "to engage in lawlessness and an anything-goes party attitude". He said most weren't patronizing the businesses that need tourism dollars and instead were merely congregating by the thousands in the street.

The huge crowds of college students also have sparked fears that there could be a new coronavirus outbreak, as there has been little social distancing. Hundreds of rowdy revelers, many not wearing masks, as is required by a Miami Beach ordinance, sat indoors in bars and restaurants and met in large groups on Ocean Drive.

"The governor has said, you know, 'Everything's open, come on down.' But the problem is that we're still in the midst of a pandemic. It's not in our rearview mirror yet by any means, and it's certainly not in my county and my city," Mayor Dan Gelber said.

"So that's a challenge, and with this many people coming, we have, it's sort of a triple threat of too many crowds, too many people acting out, and a pandemic. And those three together just create a very challenging moment."

Florida has recorded more than 2 million coronavirus infections and more than 33,000 deaths since the start of the pandemic.

The state has reported the highest number of cases of the B.1.1.7 variant. At least 12 percent of Floridians have been fully vaccinated, according to figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.