south beach tipping point by david arthur walters

8/6/2019 South Beach Tipping Point by David Arthur Walters

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/south-beach-tipping-point-by-david-arthur-walters 1/12

The Miami Mirror ² True Reflections

of 12

SOUTH BEACH TIPPING POINT

Amateur Video of Shooting on Collins Avenue

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDs-Wp_TN2c

June 1, 2011

By David Arthur Walters

The Miami Mirror

MIAMI BEACH The whole world has watched the video of the shooting spree winding up this

years Urban Week ghetto fete in Floridas once chic South Beach. Everyone has heard the

Collins Avenue corridor punctuated by gunfire and watched the black car slowly moving along,

followed by a column of white-shirted police officers who were apparently shooting at the car.

The vehicle came to a complete stop at the corner, where it stood for a minute and was semi-

circled by police. After a pause, the officers let loose with hail of gunfire that reminded the

audience of the conclusion of Bonnie and Clydes career. Anyone inside that car had to be dead.

That reportedly turned out to be a man without a gun.

The facts known thus far are sketchy, and some may not be facts in the true sense of the word.

The driver reportedly hit a police officer with his car, sped off towards officers on bikes, and ran

over their bikes when officers leaped off them, and then ran into several cars, coming to a halt

on the corner. Several people including cops and bystanders were shot or injured in the free-




of 12

for-all. A witness said the man in the car was firing a gun at the officers. Another witness said

passengers had fled from the car.

If that incident were not bad enough, another man reportedly attacked a police officer with a

car over on Washington Avenue, prompting her to draw her weapon and fire at the car in self

defense. The driver was not hit, and was duly arrested. Channel 7 captured hundreds of peopleon Washington Avenue screaming and running for their lives. The source of the gunfire was

unknown, and witnesses said police Maced people while trying to sort things out.

Many residents have concluded that the man in the first car had been seriously wounded, that

when he reached the corner, he was summarily executed by the police officers. Undoubtedly,

some said, the so-called criminal liberties union will protest, but we are sick and tired of Urban

Week and are proud of our police officers. If they deliberately executed that man, fine, let that

be a lesson to the disrespectful and uninvited crowd that swarms down here every year to trash

our home.

Whether or not the man had a gun and fired upon anyone is beside the point if the event is thetipping point that prompts the end of the disgraceful Memorial Day assaults on South Beach.

South Beach has suffered this sort of thing for ten years now. Hundreds of thousands of people

crowd South Beach every year, demonstrating total disrespect for the community as well as for

the holiday memorializing the valiant men and women who fought and died for our freedom

from crimes against humanity and chaos. Since the swarm to South Beach happens to be black,

complaints are greeted with racist accusations of racism.

Our police officers are accused of being trigger happy. A police officer must have public respect

to function effectively. Any police officers finger might be tipped to pull the trigger when she,

no matter how well trained, is confronted with a wholly disrespectful context that seems to

immediately threaten her authority. And her job is made even more difficult when she has

orders to stand down to keep the peace, to ignore much of the behavior that disgraces the law-

abiding community until it too goes to hell.

Malcolm Gladwells popular book, The Tipping Point, explains how the power of context can tip

behavior one way or another. He recites research to the effect that if little things like broken

windows and graffiti are tolerated, it will not be long until the whole neighborhood goes to hell.

We recall one of the Broken Window Theory experiments: a few windows were broken, some

graffiti was visibly placed: researchers discovered that poor black people were not necessarily

to blame for chipping in to make matter worse; relatively affluent white people were most

likely to add to the damage.

Upbringing and training does matter but does not fully explain behavior. The context matters: a

person will behave differently in different contexts. Given the suitable context, the person you

admire, perhaps your favorite colleague, may stab you in the back, or abandon you beside the

road because he has an appointment elsewhere.




of 12

Gladwell concludes that it was the state of disrepair of the New York subway trains and the lack

of enforcement of petty crimes thereon that tipped people to make matters worse. If little

things are not important, if minor crimes are not enforced, one has a better chance in that

place of getting away with big things and major crimes. Therefore, on December 22, 1984, four

black youths with criminal records were going to rob Bernhard Goetz, a white professional, on

the No. 2 train, so he pulled a gun and shot them.

Gladwell psychoanalyzes Goetz and ascertains that he was predisposed to vigilantism, therefore

he had taken an apartment in a dangerous area, was constantly complaining of crime around

there, and when he got on the train he practically invited the obviously delinquent youths to

rob him.

What Gladwell does not do is point out that Goetz was the tipping point towards order that

reversed the tipping towards disorder. I rode the rails with Goetz and other harried New

Yorkers in 1984. I was familiar with the blight around his apartment on Fourteenth Street

because my dentist had an office nearby. The subway system was as bad as Gladwell describes

it; the graffiti, the broken down trains and tracks, the fires, the stench of excrement and urine,

and the crime were out of control I recalled a boy being robbed of his tennis shoes at

gunpoint at Goetz stop at Fourteenth Street and Seventh Avenue. I had recently arrived from

gun-happy Alaska, where everyone I knew had several guns, and I was astonished by the

disrespectful behavior I witnessed on the New York subway, and attributed it to strict gun laws.

Gladwell quotes Goetz as saying, If you corner a rat and you are about to butcher it, okay? The

way I responded was viciously and savagely, just like that, like a rat. Gladwell concludes the

chapter with, Of course he did. He was in a rat hole.

Goetz, no matter how mentally unbalanced he might have been, was a hero to many New

Yorkers of all hues, the straw that broke the stubborn and unruly camels back, the man who

raised consciousness to the point where the police were warranted to crack down on quality of

life crimes, knowing that a reduction in major crimes were bound to follow. Of course it would

be politically incorrect to make too much of his vigilantism, or to call him a tipping point,

because even more disaffected people might take up arms and start shooting.

South Beach residents and visitors are mostly law-abiding therefore they usually let law

enforcement do the shooting for them. Ninety percent of residents want Urban Week to end

they do not want a compromise. Forget replacing hip hop with jazz. The ridiculousness must

end! one woman who worked the ghetto event said. Shut down the clubs and bring in the

National Guard, said another resident. Hopefully this latest police shooting will be the tippingpoint so long hoped for.

-XYX-

U pdates:




of 12

June 2, 2011. The Miami Beach Police Department announced that a gun has been found in thecar, and that it took several days to discover it because it was ³out of sight.´ Police Chief Carlos

Noriega called the discovery ³great news.´

A little historical research can work wonders. Here is Miami Herald columnist Fred Grimms

article on the subject:

Posted on Wed, Jun. 01, 2011

Urban Beach weekend is our version of Freaknik

By Fred [email protected]

MiamiHerald.com/columnists

Gunfire and gridlocked traffic and rowdy crowds and lewd displays and petty crimesand a parade of cars with booming sound systems and local residents feelingbesieged and intimidated. And a discomfiting racial undercurrent beneath the wholerollicking mess.

Atlanta can provide a quick diagnosis of what Miami Beach suffers ± Freakniksyndrome.

Atlanta reluctantly hosted its own giant, rowdy annual party through the 1990s, withthe many of the symptoms witnessed on South Beach over the Memorial Dayweekend. Including Monday¶s gunplay.

Freaknik was originally conceived as a spring break gathering for black college kids,but by 1995 the partying throng included other, decidedly non-collegiate elements.Some 200,000 youths took over the streets of downtown and midtown Atlanta. Andthe locals were not amused.

The complaints heard in Atlanta 15 years ago echoed through Miami Beach City HallWednesday. ³My husband and I were quite afraid. It was like a war zone,´ said MaryThinkelstad, describing her tour of the Urban Beach celebration for the Miami Beachmayor and city commission. She used words like ³disgraceful´ and ³embarrassed´and told how other residents had advised her to either stay home or leave town. ³It¶s




of 12

horrible to hear.´

Similar complaints piled up Wednesday. Miami Beach Mayor Matti Herrera Bower promised to defuse Urban Beach Week, though she noted that the festival has beena kind of organic event, dreamed up by private promoters. ³Something that happens

by itself,´ she said, without much input from City Hall. ³People just decide to comehere.´

The particular people who come here bring the same racial complexity to the bigparty that once faced city officials in maybe the most race-conscious town in

America, the self-described ³city too busy to hate.´ Atlanta at first tried to control theparty with city-sponsored concerts and other nurturing events. Mayor Bill Campbellargued, if not convincingly, that the kids descending on Atlanta ³were as innocent asBeach Blanket Bingo.´

That was 1993. By 1994, the bingo analogy was trampled by crowds beyond police

control, despite 143 arrests. So many cars, jammed with kids, in a perpetuallycruising, slow motion, rolling party, caused utter gridlock. Residents, trapped at homeor in traffic, complained about outrageous sexual displays and intimidatingconfrontations. Scores of women attending Freaknik gatherings complained theywere groped, their clothes ripped away.

In 1995, a mall located in a black upper-middle-class section of the city was overrun. A department store was looted. There were reports of sexual assaults. In 1996, aFreaknik visitor from Ohio was shot and killed.

It was too much for City Hall. But even for a black mayor and a black police chief,

Freaknik presented a sticky problem ² finding a way to tamp down the event withoutsuggesting black kids weren¶t welcome in the birthplace of Martin Luther King.

So they towed. The city commission passed ordinances against aimless cruising and Atlanta tow trucks went berserk. The city towed 706 cars in 1994 and kept going after the incessant cruisers, towing 472 cars in 1997, 603 in 1998, and 400 in 1999. Policeerected barricades across key streets to block off the cruising circuits ± a strategynow under discussion in Miami Beach. And Freakniks were arrested by the hundreds.By 2000, Freaknik had faded away.

Last month, Atlanta Mayor Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed threatened to sue any

organizer who dared to resurrect Freaknik events without city permits. It was clear that the city would find technical grounds to deny any permit applications.

Freaknik was dead. At least in Atlanta. Biloxi and Daytona Beach inherited some of the Freaknik crowd with variations of something called the Black College Reunion.The lack of municipal enthusiasm in those towns may have had less to do with raceas with tourist towns¶ growing aversion to the mad rowdiness of young crowds.Daytona Beach got tired of all spring breakers with their undesirable combination of




of 12

tight budgets and beery rowdiness.

Fort Lauderdale, overwhelmed by collegiate debauchery in the 1980s, used thepolice to make it clear that kids were no longer welcome. It wasn¶t about race. Thecops thumped young heads indiscriminately.

Myrtle Beach has passed a series of ordinances designed to discouraged biker, theother spring scourge, whose giant motorcycle gatherings rack up arrests andfatalities beyond anything in the annals of Freaknik or Urban Beach Week (thoughonly four motorcycle deaths were attributed to Daytona Beach¶s Bike Week in March,down from a dozen in 2006).

Daytona Beach officials have claimed they weren¶t able to get the Black CollegeReunion crowd down to a manageable size until they persuaded the BlackEntertainment Network to take its spring break broadcasts elsewhere in 2005. Likethe throngs that followed MTV, television seemed to be the catalyst for the wildest

gatherings.

So BET headed to South Beach. And it was Freaknik redux.

© 2011 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved.http://www.miamiherald.com

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/06/01/v-print/2246442/urban-beach-weekend-is-our-version.html#ixzz1O7qtcLF2

2010 UR BAN WEEK ± Here is Miami Mirror¶s article on last year¶s hip hop gala:

MONDAY, JUNE 07, 2010




of 12

Black Week South Beach - Overcrowded, Unruly , Nois y

Cop y right Mik e Trainer dba KLS Photos Production-permission granted-

The liberties fought for b y f allen patriots purportedly honored onMemorial Day were in part celebrated b y an unruly and nois y crowd

over the week end in South Beach.

Proudly called 'Black Week ' b y man y promoters, the annual eventhas been dubbed Urban Beach Week b y politically correct public relations consultants even though the multi-racial composition of most urban areas is inadequately represented during Black Week South Beach.

In an y event, it is said that Black Week brings up racial issues. And

indeed it does, given the f act that the color painting South Beach is99% black that week , so racism is assumed of this sw arming

beha vior, notwithstanding the f act that reputa ble scientists ha vesaid that sk in pigmentation is not a racial f actor and that there isreally no such thing as particular human races since we are all sortsof mongrels. Of course we noticed some black racist beha vior in the




of 12

crowd, some hateful talk . If someone organized a White Week tocelebrate white culture on South Beach, the K lan and lots of patriots

would show up, and we would hear cries of racism for sure.

This y ear's Black Week put Spring Break to shame in terms of licentious beha vior - but Super Bow l Week end w as much more of a nuisance than the sum of the previous two. The American Civil Liberties Union w as inordinately pleased this y ear b y the level of la w lessness apparently tolerated b y the massive, costly policepresence. Luck ily , the traditional sacrifices of human life b y handgun did not occur. And the y oung ladies stuck together in small pack s - last y ear one of them w as a bducted and never seen again,proba bly incinerated or fed to the shark s.

Yes, there were felonies committed, but just how man y felonies andtheir nature went unreported in f a vor of mak ing the usual understatement that most crimes are misdemeanors and not worthconsidering b y officials who live in nice and safe neighborhoods and

w ant to promote tourism. The number of arrests at 382 w as downfrom the 548 of last y ear and f ar below the nearly 1,000 arrests of 2007, although up from the 250 of the first y ear. That is, the crimes

that miscreants were arrested for were down, but that does not say an y thing a bout the beha vior that w as tolerated this y ear for fear of scaring a w ay business.

Most reporters hid behind their desk s and relied on their telephonesto collect reports from friendly officials tr y ing to balance the w antfor sin-taxes with the need for la w and order and votes from theincreasingly irate residents who believe Miami Beach does not needthe trouble of massive drunk and disorderly events, and who long

for a return to the golden day s of when the beach w as a poor man'sparadise and an economic place for a f amily to v acation or senda w ay the elders to for the winter. But this reporter ventured into thethick of it for a little while.

The esta blished press is concerned with giving a f a vora ble report of




of 12

events that dra w tourists, so we al w ay s ha ve some whitew ashing inthe name of balanced and objective reporting. I am not a member of the esta blished press, nor am I omniscient. I do ha ve a few anecdotes to share with the reader, a few isolate experiences one

might or might not use to dra w broad generalizations a bout life inSouth Beach. The truth, whatever it is, will not, as some publishersand cit y officials fear, scare tourists a w ay . South Beach has beenpromoted as a part y town for some time with great success. Sex,drugs, and hip-hop music are the big dra ws. Man y people are dra wnto South Beach to be bad, to commit the ver y sins their Puritanforef athers might ha ve executed them for in the old day s for w ant of prisons. Miami Beach, b y the w ay , is reportedly one of the top tenmost dangerous cities under 100,000 in the nation.

I live in a crime-ridden neighborhood three block s off Ocean Drive, which runs along the beach. An enterprising inha bitant of theapartment building next door to me w as renting out a small space

between the building and the sidew alk to a carload of six revelers, all of whom were so drunk the y could hardly w alk when the y got out of their car at 5:00 pm.

Another car, park ed illegally across the street, w as surrounded b y drunk en men and women engaged in a violent argument - the y hadplaced a row of empt y and half-empt y beer bottles along the top of the car. Two squad cars and two other police vehicles whizzed b y ,apparently responding to a call, as a resident frantically tried to gettheir attention, pointing at the nois y carousers.

I w alk ed over the W ashington Avenue and Seventh Street, and thefirst thing I sa w w as three y oung men with beer bottles in one hand,

using their other hands to urinate on a tree in plain sight, while boisterously cursing at cops who had stopped someone nearb y - tono a v ail because the officers were bus y - another squad car w asattending to some other business across the street.

It w as only 5:30 pm b y that time, on Saturday evening, but the




of 12

crowd w as growing. Most of them had red cups of beer in theirhands. The slogan w as "Get drunk on the beach! Get drunk on the

beach!"

I noticed two cool dudes, well dressed, with real handcuffs on theirright wrists, and thought the cuffs might be a k ind of blingsignif y ing a challenge to cops. Or may be the y w anted to get married.

An y w ay , I hung out with the crowd for a while. Most of the people were well beha ved at that early stage, but the ones on the fringes were downright scar y . And I really do not lik e crowds and drunk s,an y w ay , no matter what color the y are, so I retreated.

I received a call a few hours later, from a woman who w as holed upin her condo near Collins Avenue. She said the noise w as deafening,f ar worse than an y previous y ear, and that the police were notenforcing the noise code. She w anted the phone number for thepolice department's code enforcement division.

"I ha ve the number, but y ou're not going to get through to them," Isaid. "Their phone is ringing off the w all with complaints b y now."

"I don't care. I w ant to mak e a report. This is a bout statistics, and I w ant to be a statistic."

I spok e with her the next day . Her call did not get into the statistics because, she said, the answering s y stem had been turned off. Shef led her building for Ft. Lauderdale at 8:00 am the next day , andsaid she w as "shock ed b y the man y prostitutes" outside her building.

When I responded that man y nightclubbing women dress lik e

prostitutes now aday s, she said she w as talk ing a bout real prostitutes, for she sa w the deals going down, and the scenereminded her of movies a bout the most vulgar and sordid places incities.

Urban culture?




of 12

Code Enforcement, however, crack ed down on illegal vending andon the dumping of event advertisements on the sidew alk s. But there

w as no crack down on dog w aste, which regularly piles up

ever y where, especially in the areas between 7th and 5th Streets, theold crack hood now sometimes referred to as 'The Toilet.' The

visitors certainly noticed it when the y stepped on it. By the w ay , the best w ay to get it off the shoes is to rub them in the dirt, first of all,then on the grass.

The ever-popular Lincoln Road, with its toni shops and chic eateries, w as a virtual ghost town. It has not been the same duringBlack Week since the murders that took place beside a popular

Cuban restaurant during Black Week 2007.

Hotel business w as up on the Drive but other business w asreportedly down. There were uncorroborated reports of gunfire onthe beach, and mobs tore through sidew alk cafes along Ocean Drive,trashing some of them. Consequently , there were unprecedentedclosings along the Drive for safet y reasons.

The mob beha vior this y ear will certainly fuel future fears a boutracially motiv ated beha vior. That fear is overblown, a remnant of the fear of sla ve uprisings and urban riots in black neighborhoods.

Yet it is not the color of the crowd that is the problem in SouthBeach, but the f act that a drunk en crowd can turn into a disorderly mob. Tolerated misbeha vior may reinforce misbeha vior until it isintolera ble, and then a crack down might result in a blood y riot withhundreds of tourists and dozens of cops seriously injured. I think the cit y is over the barrel now: if it tries to rid itself of Black Week

after encouraging it, South Beach may be completely trashed.

Better y et to ha ve a Memorial Day Beer Fest for Black Week : set uphuge tents on one end of the beach, bring in the hip-hopentertainers, and let cheap beer f low at hundreds of gallons perhour. Keep the crowd penned up and happ y , with ample toilets,




of 12

vomit areas, and mats to pass out on. Troublemak ers can bearrested and lock ed down behind a fenced-in area on the other endof the beach.

Right now, the bottom line for South Beach residents: Fear not forthe future unless y ou live in the thick of it, and then y ou can eitherenjo y it, or go to another beach for Memorial Day . If y ou stay four ormore block s a w ay from Ocean Drive, y ou may not even noticean y thing unusual except for more towing of illegally park ed cars.

June 7, 2010South Beach

Da vid Arthur W alters Words & Numbers

La bels: Black Week , Miami Beach, South Beach, Urban Beach Week

posted by David Arthur Walters | 9:29 AM

2 Comments:

bane said...

Great article. The demise of Miami Beach!

July 6, 2010 10:11 AM

Sandra said...

A ccording to Miami Beach police that I ha ve spok en to, the y informed me that it

is a drain on the cit y financially , is dangerous, and most cit y dwellers stay a w ay . The y say

it would be better to commerate Memorial day as what it is-To those who ha ve given

their lives for this countr y . May be the cit y could give f amilies of soldiers/veterans a

discounted rate for that week end. A parade perhaps? Urban week end has got to go.

April 28, 2011 8:56 PM

south beach tipping point by david arthur walters

Documents