Miami's New Days of Rage

Racial violence flares again

The year-end madness in Miami is usually happy and carefully orchestrated, a prelude to the Orange Bowl parade and the big college football game it self. But the madness in Miami last week was grim and unexpected. Three days before the floats and marching bands rumbled up Biscayne Boulevard, the down-and-out Overtown section, just five blocks south of the parade route, erupted into spasms of street combat after a young black man was killed by police. By the time the pillaging and mob assaults ended, a second person had been killed by police, more than 25 people had been injured and 45 more had been arrested, mainly for looting. The disturbances lasted for three days but were minor compared with Miami's 1980 Liberty City riots, in which 18 people died. Said Police Chief Kenneth Harms: "It is a tragic situation, but not a major circumstance."

The Overtown violence began at a neighborhood video-game arcade on 14th Street. Tall, skinny Nevell ("Snake") Johnson, 20, was playing a game called Eagle after work. Just past 6 p.m., two uniformed Miami policemen, Luis Alva rez, 32, and Louis Cruz, 22, came in on their own to scrutinize the place and its 30 patrons, almost all of them young blacks.

Alvarez claims he saw and asked about a suspicious bulge under Johnson's shirt at his waist. Johnson is supposed to have answered, "That's a gun." According to Harms, "The officer placed his left hand on the gun and with his right hand drew his own revolver." Johnson then "made a sudden move." Alvarez fired his .38 point-blank into Johnson's face. The young man lay in a coma for 24 hours, then died.

Johnson's cousin by marriage, Marvin Brown, 23, was a few feet away. "Snake made no resistance at all, none," Brown insisted. He agreed with the police, however, that Johnson was carrying a pistol.

Why? By all accounts, Johnson was popular, hard-working and conscientious.

"He wasn't the type of kid who robbed or stole," says Joseph Dames, 35, an employee of the 14th Street video arcade. "He was a real sweet kid, the kind who would say, 'Yes, sir.' " When Nevell Sr., a moving man, was injured three months ago, Nevell Jr. became the family's breadwinner. He earned $910 a month as a Bade County government clerical worker.

Alvarez, who was a car salesman un til he joined the Miami police in 1981, has prompted many complaints from Miami citizens and five departmental investigations. Cruz, his partner, graduated from the police academy only last month.

Both men were transferred to desk duty while the city and the FBI investigate the shootings.

Almost as soon as Alvarez fired on Tuesday night, word of the shooting raced through the dark streets of Overtown.

First the police car out front was torched.

More police poured into the compact neighborhood, home to 4,500 people, most of them exceptionally poor blacks.

Greeted with stones and bottles, then occasional gunfire, the police responded by firing tear-gas canisters. Within hours two more police cruisers were trashed, then a van and passing private cars, a meat market and a liquor store.