The upcoming Spring Break and cracking down on ATV and dirt bike riders were major topics of discussion at the Miami-Dade County Community Relations Board meeting Wednesday.
Spring break is coming around the end of the month and will peak for a few weeks in March.
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WATCH HEREOfficers from Miami Beach spoke of their plan for the upcoming spring break, which can get chaotic as they expect big crowds.
They said there will be extra officers on duty, especially during peak times, and license plate readers will be used to identify people who are coming onto South Beach.
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The director of the board, Shirley Plantin, spoke about how her panel wants to be more involved in the planning and organizing of spring break on South Beach.
"Often times, when the city activation is being done, CRB is not at the table, right, goodwill ambassadors are not at the table, but then we put this nice package together and we drop it and say 'make it work,'" Plantin said. "So our request again on behalf of the board is hopefully we can do better."
The panel also spoke about what happened last weekend, with a large number of ATVs and dirt bikes clogging up some South Florida roadways.
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That ride started on Thursday and went through the weekend and certain streets were flat out shut down because of hundreds of riders jamming up the streets with tremendous disregard for traffic laws, police said.
Officials said they did get a heads up that there would be small groups of riders, but it turned out to be hundreds.
The Miami-Dade Police Department announced Sunday that they have arrested 40 people, seized 14 firearms and recovered five stolen vehicles during an operation to crackdown on the "rideouts."
At Wednesday's meeting, officials told members of the board that the riders are sometimes in competition with each other and of course they post to social media to drum up attention.
The CRB suggestion was that the police should have better messaging and don’t let social media drive the narrative. Police should be advertising how it’s against the law, it won’t be tolerated, and people will be arrested, the board said.
