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DORALL, Florida – The sudden escalation in gun violence across Miami-Dade has stirred the national interest, as the county’s mayor appeared on CNN early Monday morning.
“Now we’re all together. Operation Summer Heat,” Mayor Daniela Levine Cava said in our appearance.
Operation Summer Heat is the name of the 12-week county-wide policing initiative to ramp up multi-agency patrols and intelligence-gathering that was introduced last week.
Miami-Dade police say they have already resulted in 179 arrests and 51 firearms recovered.
Operation Summer Heat has led to arrests, but there is “a lot of work to be done” in Miami-Dade
But a few days after the initiative, another mass shooting occurred, the second in a week, when three people were killed and five wounded early Sunday morning outside Kendall’s hookah lounge after a graduation party.
“We had one on the north end last weekend, and here we are at the south end of the county,” Miami-Dade Police Chief Freddy Ramirez said Sunday. “It shows there is a lot of work to be done.”
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A week ago, 23 people were shot dead – three of them fatal – outside a banquet hall northwest of Miami-Dade.
So far, no arrests have been made in connection with a more recent series of high-profile cases. Among four such shootings, seven people were killed and about 30 injured.
Map shows the locations of four high-profile shootings in Miami-Dade County in recent days. (WPLG)
“Sometimes people are afraid to speak out and are afraid of retaliation because some of those are vengeful,” Levin Kava said.
On Monday afternoon, Ramirez said the latest shooting was “devastating.”
“We’ve all come together and we can’t stop and we can’t let these setbacks break our spirit as a community,” he said. “We need input from the community, we need eyes and ears there. Anything you find suspicious, any leaflets coming out promoting these parties that may create a criminal environment, we need to know.”
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Miami-Dade commissioners are set to vote on Tuesday on a multi-million dollar “Peace and Prosperity” plan to prevent gun violence, which aims to address the root causes of gun violence with funding coming from the recent Miami Heat Square naming rights agreement. . .
If approved, one of the first programs to be funded offers paid internships and summer jobs to at-risk youth.
“We have to come together as a community and stop this,” Ramirez said. We cannot continue this chain of gun violence every weekend. …this is the new epidemic. “
Read more: A closer look at Miami-Dade’s multi-million dollar plan to tackle gun violence
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