No Safe Areas in Miami, Prosecutor Says

When Rosemary Antonocchi is talking business, she talks tough. An assistant district attorney in charge of Dade County’s robbery squad, she is conversant in firearms and street talk, and in the salty language of a squad room.

But when she talks about “real life” outside the office, she sounds timid. “I won’t fill my car up with gas at night because that is a high-risk activity,” she says. “At a gas station, you are at very high risk. I avoid having to go out at night alone. I don’t go grocery shopping at night. I don’t use a bank machine, day or night.”

Miami has developed a new image as a crime capital. Miami’s crime rate is higher than New York City’s, but lower than half a dozen other cities, including Denver, Houston, Detroit and Washington. What makes Miami different, more frightening, is that crime areas move around.

“In New York, Chicago, there are safe areas,” said Antonocchi. “Overall, Miami is no worse than any other urban area. The difference is there are no safe areas. . . . When I go to New York, I find out where to go, where it’s safe, where it’s not. You can’t do that here.”

Miami is a sprawl, and virtually everyone has a car. Although residential areas are segregated racially and economically, there is significant cross traffic by criminals.

“They know where the money is, and they have no qualms about going outside their own area to reach victims,” said Lt. Russell Fischer of the Metro Dade Robbery Squad.

“No sense robbing in your own neighborhood,” Antwan Brown, a teen-ager who shot a tourist during a purse snatching, said in a prison interview. “Got to go downtown or somewheres to get real money. ‘Round my house, ladies carry nothing. Downtown, you get $200, $300 a purse.”