Protest Seen Turning Into Mayhem : ‘This Has Gone Too Far,’ Many Miami Blacks Feel

Sporadic rock-throwing Wednesday kept police here on full alert, but there was little arson or looting to match that of the two days before.

Soon after nightfall, convoys of policemen in full riot gear began sweeping through the predominantly black neighborhoods of Overtown and Liberty City. Officers leaned out of the windows of their cars, pointing semi-automatic weapons.

Dozens of teen-agers had placed tires in the streets and tossed bottles at cars. Finally, most roads into the areas were closed. Helicopters hovered. Arrests were made. The areas had the look of occupied territory.

“This has gone too far,” one lady in Overtown said from her balcony. “Most of these children don’t even know what they are rioting about.”

That apparently is a widely shared sentiment now in black Miami--that, however bad Monday’s police shooting that caused the unrest, the disturbances have gone from meaningful protest to thoughtless mayhem.

“They’re out there to steal, that’s what,” said William Calhoun, the black owner of a Liberty City tailor shop.

Melvina Green, beside her shoe repair shop, said: “Three of my sons stayed here all night to keep us from being looted. Believe me, that has nothing to do with somebody getting shot by a policeman.”

Nevertheless, in the afternoon, city commissioners tried to calm people by announcing that they had created a panel to investigate the shooting in Overtown that touched things off.

Among blacks, there is widespread belief that Monday’s police shooting of Clement Lloyd, a 23-year-old black man, was yet another example in what they claim is a continuing pattern of police brutality.

The facts are far from clear, but police agree on this much:

Lloyd allegedly was speeding. A squad car gave pursuit.

Officer William Lozano, a four-year veteran of the force, heard of the chase on his police radio. He was on foot, talking to a man about an outdated license sticker, when the motorcycle roared up the street.

Lozano shot Lloyd in the back of the head, killing him immediately. The officer has since been suspended with pay.

Wednesday, Lozano’s attorney, Roy Black, described the incident this way:

“I don’t see how anyone could question an officer’s use of deadly force when a 1,000-cc Kawasaki Ninja motorcycle--that can accelerate from zero to 60 in three seconds--is coming at him.

“The problem with this whole story is that it has been skewed. If the headlines had read, ‘Twice-convicted drug dealer shot while trying to run over officer,’ there wouldn’t have been any riots.”

Lloyd was convicted once for possessing 90 pounds of marijuana. He later served prison time for violating his probation.

Whatever his background, Lloyd’s death became an emotional spark--and here in Miami there is plenty of underlying tinder.

This city, so pretty one day and ugly the next, again confronts an unavoidable question: What is it that every few years boils over into racial violence?

The answers have much to do with a black population that feels abused by the police, neglected by the powerful and left behind in an energetic, prosperous city where Latino immigrants thrive and it does not.

Five times--in 1972, 1980, 1982, 1984 and now this week--blacks have proclaimed their grievance by taking violently to the streets.

“We have a history of civil disturbances as a kind of response--and it sort of feeds on itself,” said Miami psychologist Marvin Dunn, a black expert on racial unrest.

To a great extent, poor blacks in Miami suffer the same intractable woes as poor blacks in other cities: neighborhoods that are knots of despair.

In Liberty City and Overtown, unemployment is as high as 44%, when the count includes discouraged workers who have stopped looking for jobs.

The black poverty rate is 35% countywide--40% for black children. Schools are among the most segregated in the South, and the black dropout rate is 30%, much higher than it is for whites.

Crack cocaine is epidemic. Crime is a daily fact of life: Blacks make up 20% of the county’s population but 33% of its robbery victims and 44% of its offenders, according to the Dade-Miami Criminal Justice Council.

But there are also problems particular to Miami.

“People here prefer to deal with refugee problems rather the ones that start at home,” said Howard Gary, a black businessman who was the city manager from 1980 to 1984.

Latinos in Majority

The city itself is majority Latino. Its drift is away from the blacks, Southern whites and Northern retirees who once were the essential demographic parts.

Latinos have a thriving middle class, and their bilingual world seems impenetrable to blacks. Actually, Cuban political clout is so great it often makes the black vote irrelevant.

These last weeks, city officials opened Bobby Maduro Stadium to penniless Nicaraguan refugees flooding into the city.

The charity is fine, said longtime black activist Athalie Range, but she sees in it an unspoken message to blacks: “Black Americans for years have been sleeping under the expressways or on the sidewalk, and now the Nicaraguans show up and they get a baseball stadium.”

There is a fear that immigrants take jobs from blacks, and sometimes that is so.

“A lady I know is a housekeeper,” Range said. “She’s about to lose her job to a Nicaraguan who’ll work just for a room.”

The black and Latino communities here do not understand each other well. This week, as the disturbances raged, Cuban radio commentators sometimes described the unrest as a political plot.

“It’s not a racial problem; it’s a problem caused by those who are in service of the worst cause in human history--the communists,” said Juan Amador Rodriguez on WOCN.

Few black faces are at the top of Miami government and business, and, when they are, there is often controversy.

U.S. Judge Alcee Hastings, the first black on the federal bench in Florida, awaits impeachment proceedings in Congress. Howard Gary lost the city manager’s job when he fell out of favor with three Latino city commissioners.

“There is the general perception that blacks become targets when they get to high places,” Gary says.

But the most constant complaint from blacks regards the police. Last year, an organization of black churches presented evidence of 16 cases of alleged police brutality to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

The cases include a number of killings of black suspects by white policemen. They date to the 1980 death of black businessman Arthur McDuffie. The acquittal of four white policemen in that beating death led to rioting in which 18 people died.

“And it’s not just killings we worry about,” says the Rev. Billy Baskin, pastor of New Way Fellowship Baptist Church. “It’s the total disrespect. A policemen here asks to see your license and he adds the word nigger or boy. “

Community leaders have made efforts to deal with these objections. Miami’s current police chief, Perry Anderson, is black, as was his predecessor.

At the same time, there have been local attempts to create more black-owned businesses and build low-cost housing--with some notable successes.

But much of the work depended on federal funds, and allocations were erased during budget cuts.

Undoubtedly, there will now be more talk of addressing economic distress in black Miami--if only things first settle down.

“Oh yes, they’re rallying us now to get things back to normal,” said Baskin. “But normal is just what’s the trouble.”

Times researcher Lorna Nones contributed to this story.

RIOTING IN MIAMIMONDAY

6:05 p.m., off-duty Miami police Officer John Mervolion pursues two black men on a speeding motorcycle. Three blocks away, Officer William Lozano spots the motorcycle and fires once, hitting the driver, Clement Anthony Lloyd, in the head. Lloyd is pronounced dead at the scene. His passenger, Allan Blanchard, 24, is taken to Jackson Memorial Hospital in critical condition.

7:30 p.m., Mayor Xavier Suarez and City Manager Cesar Odio arrive at the scene with more police and attempt to calm the rapidly growing crowd.

8 p.m., Rocks and bottles are thrown at police officers, reporters and city officials.

8:20 p.m., all off-duty officers and police supervisors are called in as mobs of youths begin roaming the streets, smashing windshields, burning vehicles, looting stores and occasionally firing weapons.

Shortly before 10 p.m., police in riot gear fire tear gas and then withdraw to a 17-by-9-block perimeter.

Midnight, police say most of the area is calm.

TUESDAY

Morning, police suspend Lozano, a four-year veteran, with pay pending an investigation into whether he used excessive force.

1:30 p.m., a white man in a luxury car fires into a crowd of blacks in Overtown and drives away. Derrick Mitchell, 19, is hospitalized in fair condition with a bullet wound in his side.

4:10 p.m., Blanchard dies of head injuries from the collision.

5 p.m., police in Overtown shoot an alleged sniper in the leg.

7 p.m., a man is shot in the thigh in a gun battle between two men in a store and a gang of looters. Police officers are fired on as they try to rescue him but manage to get him out.

8 p.m., police tell residents of Overtown and Liberty City to remain indoors, and they begin a block-by-block sweep of the area.

8:15 p.m., police officers return fire at another Liberty City man who was apparently firing at them. Police say the man is wounded in the leg but release no further details.

8:45 p.m., widespread looting and fires are reported at stores in Liberty City.

9:30 p.m., Police Officer Eric Butler is shot in his bulletproof vest by a sniper firing from the top of a three-story building.

10:20 p.m., a young black man is shot to death and an arrest is made in Liberty City.

10:50 p.m., a person is shot three times by an unknown assailant on the fringe of Liberty City.

11:10 p.m., a man is shot in the leg in Liberty City.

WEDNESDAY

12:30 a.m., 230 arrests are made as the sound of gunfire continues in Liberty City.

Toward dawn, calm enables police to begin pulling out of Overtown and Liberty City.

MIAMI’S RACIAL MAKEUP

1980 1985 1988 (Est.) (Est.) Latino 32% 42% 44% Black 17% 20% 20% Non-Latin Whites 47% 36% 35%

Source: Census Bureau statistics, Associated Press

(Southland Edition) MIAMI’S DECADE OF RACIAL VIOLENCE

1980: Rioting erupts in predominantly black Liberty City after an all-white jury acquits four police officers accused of manslaughter in the beating death of black businessman Arthur McDuffie. Eighteen people are killed, 400 injured and $100 million in property destroyed.

1982: Three days of rioting are touched off after Luis Alvarez, a Cuban-American policeman, shoots to death Nevell Johnson Jr., a 20-year-old black man. Property damage runs into the millions.

1984: Disturbances break out after Alvarez is acquitted of manslaughter charges. More than 200 people are arrested. Several are injured.