Miami Springs adds tracking cameras as ‘nuisance’ program falters

The Miami Springs City Council voted 5-0 Monday to secure its borders with more surveillance cameras after police cited rising crime in the historic city, population 14,000, just north of Miami International Airport.

“These three ALPR’s [automated license plate readers] would then give us a total of five license plate readers citywide which would cover every entrance and exit in the city,” City Manager William Alonso said.

The tracking cameras will photograph, scan, and collect data from every license tag and vehicle that passes by the following areas:

North Royal Poinciana Blvd. and Crane Avenue, near a proposed $2 million Metrorail bridge that the city pushed for — but now wants to back out of — after the Herald showed it would link to hourly motels and a strip club.

Ludlum and Lafayette Drives, near a bike path where a Miami Springs man was pistol-whipped, last March, in a noontime iPhone robbery. The path is popular with transients and inmates from nearby TGK prison, where a new intake and release facility will soon be built. That means that each person arrested in Miami-Dade will be booked and eventually released at this facility.

Curtiss and Fairway Drives, at Miami Springs’ south entrance, blocks from where the city announced plans to build eight-foot-fences along Northwest 36th Street to rein in drug dealing, prostitution, and other “immoral behavior.”

However, the city’s busy east entrance —— near an hourly motel and adjacent to the hotel district — will not be monitored by a police camera, officials said.

And it remains unclear why no police camera will be placed in Miami Springs’ adult entertainment district, which permits sex shops, lap dances, bondage, and humiliating activities, the city ordinance says. Police frequent this zone, officially called the “Abraham Tract,” which includes hotels and homeless shelters.

Last May, Miami Springs Police Chief Armando Guzman lobbied city leaders to hire more cops citing a surge in crime in the city’s hotel and red-light districts that included robberies, shootings and human trafficking.

“Last time I checked, 40 percent of our calls for uniformed patrol are from the hotels, and 50 percent of our investigations are from the hotels,” said Miami Springs Police Chief Armando Guzman, a former Miami police officer and SWAT team member. “Our number one area of issues and problems is the hotels.”

In June, Guzman was asked to provide the City Council with a list of all residential and commercial properties deemed criminal nuisances.

“I can tell you right now,” Guzman said.

“Do you want them in alphabetical order?” said City Manager William Alonso.

A public records request by the Miami Herald seeking a list of properties that met the city’s nuisance criteria went unfulfilled.

Last month, the Miami Springs City Council voted 5-0 to approve an ordinance creating a Nuisance Abatement Board that would preside over civil disturbances brought to the attention of police, officials said.

Surprisingly, it was revealed at Monday’s City Council meeting that not a single property — including hotels police claimed were hotbeds for robberies, prostitutions, and rapes — has met its nuisance criteria.

“Those are some that are close, but they have not exactly met the criteria,” said Guzman.

Since it has come to light that the abatement board has no nuisances to contend with, a resolution was quickly passed Monday that lets cops tackle crime using another approach, or from behind their desks.

The City Council found it “in the best interest and welfare of the residents of the city” to add surveillance cameras.

“The license plate readers’ features are awesome,” said Miami Springs Mayor Maria Mitchell, who asked at a prior meeting if the city could also install cameras that would automatically issue tickets to speeders.

There was no discussion about privacy implications, specifically where citizens’ private data ends up, how it would be stored, and whether it would be shared.

For example, the ACLU reported, in 2019, that more than 80 local law enforcement agencies, from over a dozen states, have agreed to share license plate location information with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

One digital rights’ advocate says the cameras should raise concerns.

“The public in Miami Springs should be very concerned that license plate readers in their city are being expanded as an afterthought and without the public being presented with information about retention and sharing rules and given an opportunity to make their voices heard at the city council meeting,” said Adam Schwartz, a senior staff attorney at the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The five-camera program is expected to cost $10,740 per year, officials said.

The next City Council meeting takes place at 7 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 13, at 201 Westward Dr.

Theo Karantsalis can be reached at karantsalis@bellsouth.net .