The 44 Percent: Miami Beach PD pushed for new crowd control law ahead of Rolling Loud
It’s summertime, and everybody could use a little R&R.
This week, C. Isaiah Smalls II, the Miami Herald’s race and culture reporter and the author of The 44 Percent, is kicking back. He’ll return next week.
In the meantime, the stories keep coming.
Inside the 305
‘My jaw dropped.’ Video raises questions about another Miami Beach arrest and a new law
Another week, another video showing glaring discrepancies between what Miami Beach police have written in arrest affidavits and what they’ve done while arresting Black people on South Beach.
In July, Mariyah Maple, a 27-year-old visitor from New York, was accused of breaking a new city ordinance making it illegal for people to be within 20 feet of police with the “intent to impede, provoke or harass” an officer, following a warning. Miami Beach commissioners passed the law in June, ostensibly to keep people from encircling Beach cops while they do their jobs amid large crowds.
But video tells a different story: Maple was on the sidewalk at Sixth and Collins on July 25, recording Sgt. Vincent Stella on her cell phone, when Stella shouted for her to “Back up. Back up.” The officer then quickly and aggressively walked from the street to the sidewalk, whipped bicycle around like a shield, striking Maple’s hand, and deployed his pepper spray.
From Thursday’s story by David Ovalle and Martin Vassolo: Emails obtained by the Miami Herald show the police department — which has drawn criticism for its handling of large, mostly Black crowds that periodically flock to the city for Memorial Day weekend, Spring Break and other events — pressed to get it into place before crowds arrived for Rolling Loud, the hip-hop festival that draws thousands of fans to South Florida.
“We’re turning bystanders and good Samaritans into criminals,” Kara Gross, the legislative director and senior policy attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, said of the ordinance. “The ACLU opposes any efforts by law enforcement to adopt and utilize legislation as a tool for targeting and criminalizing Black and brown communities.”
The day after Maple was arrested, Stella was involved in the rough take-down of Dalonta Crudup in the Royal Palm Hotel following a chase. Video of the scrum has led prosecutors to file charges against five police officers, though Stella is not among them. Charges against two men arrested while filming police at the hotel have also been dropped.
Related stories:
- Activists seek stiffer charges for Miami Beach officers accused of beating Black men
Miami Beach police chief right to take forceful stand against excessive force | Editorial
- Beach Police have long been accused of becoming aggressive when cameras come out
Outside the 305
‘Even our animals did not survive.’ Rural areas near Haiti quake epicenter are ruined
On Saturday, a 7.2 earthquake rocked Haiti’s Tiburon peninsula. More than 2,000 are dead and more than 12,000 injured, according to the country’s Office of Civil Protection.
The Miami Herald’s Jacqueline Charles and staff photographer Jose Iglesias are on the ground. Here’s what Charles described in one of her latest dispatches:
Even the graveyards weren’t spared.
To see the destruction of Haiti’s powerful 7.2 magnitude earthquake, one just has to drive the rocky, rural stretch of road between Bonne Fin in the southwest countryside and L’Asile in the neighboring region known as the Nippes.
Churches, schools, homes, all lay in ruin and desolation. Even the mud structures and thatched roof homes that characterize rural communities throughout this dirt-poor Caribbean nation did not survive.
The timing couldn’t have been worse. Haiti is in turmoil following the assassination of President Jovenal Moïse. And the nation has never truly recovered from the 7.0 earthquake that killed more than 300,000 in 2010.
In South Florida, home to the largest concentration of Haitians in the U.S., efforts are afoot to send aid. Every little bit counts. Haiti needs help.
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