There’s a plan coming to stem gunfire in Miami-Dade County. What can government do?

In Miami-Dade County, elected leaders plan to spend millions of dollars this summer targeting another new normal: a relentless stream of shootings that accelerated over Memorial Day weekend as multiple people opened fire outside a nightclub in the Northwest area of the county. Two people died, and at least 20 others were wounded.

The fatal violence — one of three brazen shootings in the county during the long weekend — punctuated a year of increasing alarm over a rise in shootings during the COVID-19 pandemic. Homicides were up 16% in 2020, with almost 25% of the victims under 21, according to a county summary from early May.

“If we want to slow down the shootings over the summer, we are going to have to do the hard work,” County Commissioner Oliver Gilbert, whose district borders the location of the shooting, said during a May 13 discussion of how to spend $10 million over the next two years to reduce gun violence.

The dollars come from a naming-rights deal that Miami-Dade secured for the Miami Heat’s county-owned arena.

On Sunday, Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said her “Peace and Prosperity” plan was still being updated as the administration awaits a commission vote. She said to expect more funding for police analysts to monitor social media and an expansion of the county’s existing surveillance-camera program.

To make long-term progress, Levine Cava said the county has to spend more diverting at-risk children from more violent acts. She said the plan to increase spending on internships, summer jobs and counseling will focus on youths who are already on the wrong path.

“We are identifying children who already have been in trouble with the system. Those children are our priority,” she said.

Of the $7 million in the mayor’s short-term plan, more than $6 million would expand existing summer programs for children. That includes nearly $4 million for the Parks Department’s Fit2Lead program. A mix of summer camp and job training, Fit2Lead offers teens recreational programs as well as coaching for public speaking and other life lessons.

They’re then given the chance to work as paid interns at Parks or at participating businesses nearby. Currently confined to areas in South Miami-Dade, the internship program would expand with the infusion of dollars from the arena’s new sponsor, the FTX cryptocurrency exchange.

For neighborhoods with high incidents of gun violence, the plan also would use existing federal dollars to attempt to prove economic conditions — though details haven’t been released on that effort.

“You have to change the conditions in the community,” she said. “You can’t just focus on crimes when they occur.”

Freddie Ramirez, the county’s police director, said he wants Miami-Dade to focus on social needs as well as police in targeting violence.

If it’s not a “multi-prong approach,” he said, you “just stay on that merry-go-round again and again.”

Miami-Dade police also plan to boost spending on a unit dedicated to youth crime. For the agency’s proposed 2022 budget, $2.6 million will go to 13 officers assigned to the Youth Outreach Unit — a 60% increase. The officers offer mentoring to at-risk youth but also monitor social media for clues to upcoming violence. That includes “music videos that taunt rival groups” and “photos of individuals brandishing firearms,” according to a county summary.

As of late Sunday morning, police had not identified a motive or suspects in the overnight shooting, but were looking into whether there was a connection with a Thursday shooting and car chase near Casino Miami Jai-Alai and a Friday shooting in Wynwood.

Miami-Dade Commissioner Kionne McGhee, a former prosecutor who now represents a South Miami-Dade district that had 42 shooting homicides last year, wants the county to expand surveillance in areas with high incidents of gun violence. Miami-Dade installed audio-detection equipment made by ShotSpotter in 2017, and it alerts police when it hears gunfire sounds.

A year into operation, the county’s ShotSpotter equipment in high-crime areas in the northern and southern ends of the county generated more than 2,000 alerts, with 9,000 suspected incidents of gunfire. McGhee wants funding to install surveillance cameras in a network around each ShotSpotter device as well to make it easier to capture shooters on video.

“Criminals are criminals because they think they can get away with it,” he said. “Don’t just give me the ShotSpotters. Give me the cameras in hot spots as well.”

He’s also pushing for more funding to non-profits that work in low-income neighborhoods and can help provide a link between police and the community.

“Law enforcement in the past was able to speak with community members easily and get information to help solve their cases,” he said. “We’ve seen a disconnect.”

Miami Herald Staff Writer Charles Rabin contributed to this report.