Mayor Daniella Levine Cava and other Miami-Dade leaders have vowed to bring perpetrators of gun violence to justice, but there are also plans intended to reduce the crimes.
MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. – The shocking images of brazen gunmen and piercing sounds of gunfire rattling neighbors across Miami-Dade in recent days elevate a discussion already underway in the county about investing millions of dollars in a multi-pronged gun violence prevention plan.
The money comes from FTX’s purchase of naming rights of the county-owned arena in downtown Miami where the Miami Heat plays. FTX is a cryptocurrency exchange.
According to the “Peace & Prosperity Plan” obtained by Local 10 News from the office of Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, there has been a 45% increase in homicides since 2016. The plan also says that “nearly one in four victims in 2020 was younger than 21 years old.”
Acevedo says 86 percent of shootings in the City of Miami take place in five neighborhoods.
“Poor communities which sadly are the ones most impacted by violent crime they don’t want to defund the police. They want better policing and they want enhanced safety like every community in this country,” Acevedo said.
To make these neighborhoods safe, Acevedo said he’s deploying more than 130 officers to the specific areas with the most trouble: Little Havana, Little Haiti, Allapattah, Overtown, and Model City.
So far this year, 22 people have been killed in Miami. 15 were murdered at the same time in last year.
Guttenberg says Biden has made a good start on curbing gun violence without infringing on gun rights, pointing out his recently-signed executive orders regulating so-called ghost guns, adding money to the School Violence Protection program, and encouraging states to pass red flag laws, as Florida already did.
Red flag laws, also called extreme risk protection order laws, allow police to seize guns from people deemed to be mentally unstable.
“We passed gun safety in Florida after Parkland, we did, we raised the age to 21, we passed red flag laws, we put in process a waiting period, there’s not a single lawful gun owner that spends one second thinking about what we did in Florida because it doesn’t affect them,” Guttenberg said, referring to the law signed by former Gov. Rick Scott just weeks after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shootings.
As the legislative session draws to a close, a package of criminal justice reform bills has languished. But proposals to crack down on unruly protesters and further protect police officers have sailed through various committees and chambers of the statehouse.