Locals and visitors have long complained that MBPD habitually roughs up black visitors to South Beach. But after this weekend, black city leaders and activists are fed up. The Miami-Dade County chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is asking City Manager Jimmy Morales and Police Chief Richard Clements to resign.
"We've had enough!" a flyer posted on the NAACP's Instagram page reads.
The chapter's president, Ruban Roberts, tells New Times the NAACP had a positive relationship with former MBPD Chief Dan Oates, who regularly met with the association and often resisted calls from other Miami Beach politicians to arrest more partygoers. Roberts says he warned those politicians last summer that replacing Oates with Clements might be a bad call and could lead to more violent interactions between black visitors and law enforcement. According to Roberts, Clements has not yet met with the NAACP.
Now Roberts questions why MBPD cops under Clements' leadership put on riot gear this week when an influx of black tourists arrived.
"There's no justification other than intimidation for them to wear that gear and for them to have those guns," Roberts says.
The Miami-Dade NAACP also is calling for Morales to step down because the city manager oversees police decisions.
"Any action the officers take or the chief takes, whether it's using riot gear or assault rifles and bullets, has to have approval from the mayor and city manager," Roberts says.
Neither Morales nor spokespeople for the city and police department responded to messages from New Times this afternoon.
In a clip that went viral last week, officers were recorded firing pepper-ball bullets into a crowd of mostly black partygoers as a large team of cops violently arrested a black beachgoer. One officer stuck a knee into the man's head as he was pinned to the ground. At the end of the clip, a cop fired a pepper-ball gun into the foot of another black visitor. In arrest reports, the officers claimed they were there to break up a fight; seven men wound up arrested on charges of obstructing officers without violence.
In a second clip from the same incident, a large, muscular male Miami Beach officer hip-checked a woman into the ground, smacked her head repeatedly against the asphalt, and pinned her down by placing his hand around her neck. Police say the woman had punched a cop car first.
Those incidents preceded a shooting last night around 8:30 on Ocean Drive. According to reports, cops shot a man after allegedly noticing a gun in his waistband. The man is reportedly in stable condition, but the incident sparked a stampede as patrons sprinted away from the sound of gunshots.
In addition to asking for the leadership changes, Roberts and the Miami-Dade NAACP are requesting that the city create a civilian oversight panel to review complaints against Miami Beach cops. A similar panel exists to monitor officers with the Miami Police Department.
"I'm not calling Jimmy or the mayor racist," Roberts says, "but it has racial overtones when you only do that with one population. You can't tell me that on the other spring break weeks when you have white college kids come down, the kids don't also act unruly? Why is that different? There's only one common denominator."
