Miami Beach police used SWAT equipment to try to enforce their emergency curfew against out-of-control spring breakers, which also sparked a wild stampede firing pepper balls, according to reports and videos.
Videos on social media and local media showed thousands of partygoers challenging both the COVID-19 pandemic and the Florida Beach City curfew after starting at 8 a.m. Saturday.
Even when police SWAT teams rolled in to block the streets and used piercing sound cannons to try to clean the streets completely full, the parties remain enraged for hours, a Daily Beast reporter noted from the scene.
Videos shared on social media showed a certain position among the masses throw money – while another showed women turning on top of the cars long after the curfew was supposedly applied.
At least one woman boarded a police vehicle to dance provocatively, the Miami Herald noted.
Police fired pepper balls at the crowd, the Daily Beast said wildly videos showing a crazy stampede among the still full crowd.
Several people were knocked to the ground, including a man who expertly had a bottle of Hennessy to protect her from breaking, the outlet noted.
It was not immediately known if anyone was injured and Miami Beach police have not yet announced whether there were any arrests. The streets weren’t completely cleaned until around midnight, four hours after the curfew began, the Miami Herald said.
Local officials applied the curfew after the mass fighting and an increase in crime among the mass of people who broke the spring and who also defy coronavirus security protocols, they said.
The Miami Beach City Commission is scheduled to hold an emergency meeting at 3 p.m. Sunday to discuss the interim curfew, which was interim municipal manager Raul Aguila, who declared the state of emergency.
“These crowds are in the thousands,” Aguila told the newspaper. “We’re ready.”
But the curfew won’t make a difference, several visitors told the Daily Beast, including Q Johnson, a 20-year-old student at Manhattan College in New York.
“This is crazy,” Johnson said. “She is OK. It’s chaotic … There are too many mothers who are illegal here. “
He insisted he was not worried about the pandemic and said, “We’re fine. We’re young.”
Jeb Jones, 24, of the University of Illinois, told the media that the “low point” was simply “waiting in line to get into McDonald’s.”
“The curfew won’t stop me,” he promised. “It simply came to our notice then. The bars are great. “