to be clear, the priority is not Covid, but preventing mobs from forming and rioting breaking out, which they have already seen as a tough job even with extra help they are already getting:

[....] "This was not an easy decision to make," City Manager Raul J. Aguila said as he outlined all the measures. "But you saw the photos from last night. It was quite simply overwhelming. It looked like a rock concert: you couldn't see pavement and you couldn't see grass." [....]

"We will be calling a special commission meeting to discuss these measures and decide whether we want to keep them, modify them or adopt additional measures after 72 hours," Aguila said.

Mayor Gelber said he suspected that the volume of this year's crowds had been higher than in previous years due to the fact that "there are very few places in the country that are open" other than South Beach.

Miami Beach Police Chief Rick Clements noted that law enforcement deputies had been having a tough time controlling crowds, despite having several police departments' help.

"We've done everything we can to try and mitigate the behavior we're seeing," Clements said. He said that in one incident on Thursday night, a crowd of hundreds of people had formed a mob and began to use tables and chairs as weapons.

"Property was destroyed," the police chief said. "Then last night, we had three more (similar incidents)." [....]

you can see the potential for that happening just in these two photos from other articles

I suspect it's like this: BIPOC need more flexibility on time on curfew deadlines because they have a different, woke, non-colonialist understanding of time, similar to math? You just have to be patient with them, they will eventually get off the streets?

The problem I see is that the police and the borrowed police forces from other localites (and no doubt the "goodwill ambassadors" too?) bill for overtime on colonialist time. That if they have to have lots more duties coming and saving lots more people from killing each other in drunken brawls at 2 am, in addition to their normal (covid era) duties, and the new revelers aren't paying the piper for this and that and instead running out on their restaurant bills and using businesses' chairs and tables for weapons (when their guns have already been taken away by police on overtime), then the colonialists have to pay.

Everyone's entitled to paaaarty eh, even people who can't afford it? Taxpayers pay. Businesses would be happy to pay if you spend more more money than you cost, but that doesn't appear to be happening this year?

this is an interesting excerpt:

Businesses about 30 miles north, in the city of Fort Lauderdale, are monitoring the developments in Miami Beach. “We’ve been watching it very closely,” Dan Lindblade, president and chief executive of the Greater Fort Lauderdale Chamber of Commerce, said on Sunday evening. “We’ll do everything we have to do to make sure we don’t have the same situation happen up here.”

Fort Lauderdale dealt with similar spring break problems in the 1980s and early ’90s, until the city and businesses decided to make some changes, he said. One major change: Hotels started charging more money for rooms. “We’re not catering to an under-$150-a-night” crowd, Mr. Lindblade said, adding, “We’re $300 to $500 a night, and that’s just a different crowd.”

The effect, Mr. Lindblade said, has been notable. “It’s a family-oriented atmosphere,” he said, “and that’s been great for our economy.”

that says to me that this is not about color as much as it is about economic class! Ft. Lauderdale tourists are and always have been mostly white (though there is a large black neighborhood of permanent residents).

BUT I have mostly seen Miami Beach tourists and residents both include LOTS of people of color from all over the world, but with money!

In both cases, seems to me to be a "riff raff" problem as far as spring break tourists and higher costs does do the trick, as would regulations about congregating too much on the street to avoid having to spend money and things like drinking alcohol on the street.

Ocean Drive is Miami Beach, while known for things like trannie shows and other outre activities, is quite swank and is actually a historic district architecturally. This is all a little like a huge drunken crowd with not much money going and trashing the Champs Elysees in Paris. Miami proper, I am sure has had trouble with trashy college kids raising hell, but I'd really be surprised to learn Miami Beach's Ocean Drive area ever had this level of trouble before.

(I even saw one tweet sort of address that, the guy had just learned about the curfew and he then said "uh oh, I wouldn't want to be living in Wynwood tonite." Wynwood is an artsy avant-garde warehouse type neighborhood in Miami proper, not Miami Beach, that is surrounded by some pretty rowdy Latin neighborhoods as far as partying is concerned. He was obviously thinking they would go there instead once shooed out of Miami Beach. But that is back over the bridge, and those going there would have to get back some way to their hotel if in Miami Beach. Maybe part of the problem is that Miami Beach hotels offered really lots of cut rates right now? And were surprised at the kind of customer they got, paying with their "stimmies"?

And this part counters above about warnings after sunset:

... a formation of Miami Beach squad cars and officers on all-terrain vehicles cruised north on Ocean Drive, working to clear the streets. They blasted ear-drum-piercing sound cannons as a prerecorded message blared from loudspeakers.

“The city of Miami Beach is under a state of emergency,” the message said, playing on a loop. “There is a curfew in effect from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. You are commanded to immediately and peacefully disperse.”

I've been on the length of Ocean Drive, it's really really hard to believe someone saying they did not hear it.