Violence and flames fueled by racial rage raced through Miami`s poor black neighborhoods Tuesday in a second night of uproar punctuated by sniper fire, assault, arson and looting.
One person was reported slain and at least six others, including a police officer, were wounded by gunfire Tuesday.
At 8 p.m., Mayor Xavier Suarez and police commanders announced on television that they would ”take energetic action and become much more aggressive,” sending forces into troubled areas and arresting lawbreakers.
A second man involved in the police shooting Monday night that triggered the unrest died while a third man was shot Tuesday afternoon by a passing motorist, further antagonizing the 7,000 mostly black residents of the Overtown neighborhood.
By nightfall, the disruption had spread from Overtown, just north of downtown Miami, to Liberty City, another troubled and riot-prone black area to the northwest that is three times the size of Overtown.
In Liberty City late Tuesday night, county sheriff`s police arrested an unidentified black male in the fatal shooting of another black male. Sheriff`s deputies said the arrested man and his victim had stolen a check-printing machine while looting a shop, then argued over who would take the machine home. The arrested man left the scene, went home, returned with a handgun and shot his colleague, police said.
City officials, their hopes of a peaceful prelude to Sunday`s Super Bowl in tatters, Tuesday night called in the Florida Highway Patrol to quell violence in Liberty City. There were reports that Gov. Bob Martinez would call out the National Guard.
Police in large convoys moved from one trouble spot to another in Liberty City. Shop owners in Liberty City and Overtown pledged to stay in their businesses through the night to repel looters.
Schools were closed and days off for police were canceled. A National Basketball Association game between the Miami Heat and Phoenix Suns-scheduled at the Miami Arena, on the edge of Overtown-was canceled 50 minutes before it was to start after intense community pressure. The Chicago Bulls are scheduled to play there Thursday night.
The disturbances mark the fourth time the Miami area has been hit with open racial violence since 1980, when the acquittal of three police officers accused in the death of a black insurance man provoked three days of violence in which 18 people died and 400 were hurt.
The slaying of a black man by a Hispanic police officer in December, 1982, in an Overtown video arcade-just blocks from the spot where the current turmoil began-also ignited riots.
On Tuesday evening, more than 200 Miami police surrounded Overtown, 2 miles square, in an effort to contain random sniper fire, shootings, rock and bottle throwing, arson and looting. Police claimed they had shot one sniper in the leg, and reports of random shooting increased as the evening wore on.
By 12:30 a.m. Wednesday, county and city police reported having made 230 arrests, most of them for looting.
Civic and business leaders who have planned and labored for years to showcase Miami during this Super Bowl week were stunned when they learned of the violence in their city. But they endeavored to put the best possible face on the situation.
”This is just awful,” said Tom Ferguson, president of the powerful Beacon Council, the nonprofit economic development and marketing organization charged with promoting south Florida as a good place to do business.
Ferguson, who once served as Illinois` director of economic development, acknowledged that his job during Super Bowl week has been altered from promotion to damage control.
The Miami Superhost Committee was given a $2 million budget and drafted more than 1,800 volunteer workers to promote the ”Miami Nice” campaign and present the city in the best light to more than 1,500 visiting reporters, 80,000 fans and a national and international TV audience.
But what emerged to flaw the image was the lingering agony of life in black areas such as Overtown and Liberty City, where police are the enemy and the commerce of narcotics is part of everyday life.
In that dreary world of ramshackle homes, bombed-out tenements and vacant lots, where liquor stores and junk shops are the major businesses, the rage was palpable among residents watching news coverage on portable TV sets about the unrest.
”We`re getting madder and madder,” said Peter Ramon, 61, who has lived in Overtown for 20 years. ”There`s a lot of hatred from us. This has been brewing here for a long time.”
The feeling of dislocation and despair among blacks has been worsened in recent years by a heavy influx of Hispanics-first Cubans and now a new wave of Central Americans, especially more than 100,000 from Nicaragua-who, many blacks feel, are making their economic lot even worse.
”What we want is better conditions, better jobs, like the Cubans and those people coming in,” said Ruby Burden as she stopped in a liquor store.
”They got to listen to us sometime.”
The violence began Monday evening when a black motorcyclist, Clement Lloyd, was shot and killed by a Miami police officer while being chased by two other officers.
Police said Lloyd, 24, a native of the Virgin Islands, was unarmed. No clear explanation why he was being chased or why he was shot has emerged;
black community leaders asserted that he had made an obscene gesture toward two police officers.
Lloyd was shot to death by a third officer, William Lozano, 29, who apparently had stopped another motorist in an unrelated matter.
A passenger on the motorcycle, Allen Blanchard, 19, was critically injured when the cycle crashed into a car after Lloyd was shot. Blanchard died Tuesday in a Miami hospital.
Lozano, a three-year veteran of the Miami force, was suspended with pay pending an investigation into the shooting. The FBI announced Tuesday that it would conduct its own investigation into possible civil-rights violations in the incident. Late Tuesday night, a Miami TV station reported that Lozano had refused to cooperate in the investigation.
The shooting triggered six hours of violence. Police and reporters were pelted with rocks and bottles from highway overpasses and at least two TV vans were torched. There were seven arrests, but no serious injuries were reported. But Tuesday, despite Mayor Suarez`s claim that tranquility had returned to the area, the violence heightened as the day wore on.
A 19-year-old Overtown resident, Derek Mitchell, was grazed by a bullet fired by a motorist hit with rocks thrown by a group of youths on a street corner. The motorist escaped on foot. Mitchell was in good condition in a hospital Tuesday night.
Police, reporters and others were targets. Two police vehicles were destroyed. An auto parts warehouse was set on fire and a meat market looted.
Several news reporters and photographers defied police efforts to dissuade people from entering the area.
An Associated Press photographer was beaten, a Chicago Tribune reporter was robbed at gunpoint and a Canadian TV crew was roughed up while their van was battered. On Monday night, the car in which a Houston sportwriter and his wife were riding was hit with bricks but they were unharmed.
Mayor Suarez was praised for his courage by some while others questioned his sanity as he waded into the violent neighborhood Monday and Tuesday, sometimes under a barrage of bottles and rocks. On one early foray, police refused to follow him as he went to console Lloyd`s family.
The mayor pledged quick action in investigating the shooting. He met with black leaders and spoke on a black radio station Tuesday in an attempt to quell the violence.
But the city`s early refusal to cancel the Heat-Suns basketball game became a point of contention with black leaders late Tuesday. City officials had hoped to go ahead and let the game be played as a sign of community stability, but black leaders demanded its cancellation as a sign of concern.
The game was finally canceled by the NBA at the city`s urging just 50 minutes before its scheduled 8 p.m. start, after the windows of four cars near the arena were smashed out and another car was overturned.
Some black leaders were also highly critical of the city`s decision to close five schools and some government offices in the Overtown area Tuesday, claiming that the closures would only heighten tension.
”We ought to be experts in rioting and civil disturbances in this neighborhood but it was stupid to close the schools, especially since most of those kids are bused outside the neighborhood-now you have kids hanging around doing nothing,” said T. Willard Fair, head of the Urban League in Miami
”They also closed down the service agencies where residents get their food stamps and federal cheese, so they are mad about that too,” he added.
Fair said he doubted the disturbance would affect attendance at the Super Bowl, which will be played in Joe Robbie Stadium more than 15 miles away.
”Anybody who would pay $1,000 to watch a football game will not be deterred by the fact that someone was shot in the street last night,” the black leader said.
”If the game was at the Orange Bowl, which is right in the neighborhood, there would probably be some fallout, but you can get to the game and not even know that Overtown exists. It will be safer than ever.”
