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A long the Miami River, the sight is at once odd and commonplace. Loaded with mostly stolen bicycles in stacks the height of an 8-year-old, small cargo boats routinely chug down the river, headed for the Caribbean. After public calls for a crackdown on the illicit trade, city police recruited the U.S. Customs Service and Border Patrol agents last month to form a task force to stop the smuggling of stolen goods. Raiding boat after boat last week, agents hauled in 350 bikes, largely bound for Haiti where few people can afford cars. On the island, even the most battered bicycle can fetch between $30 and $50.
Now a polluted waterway lined with warehouses, the Miami River has a colorful tradition of crime. Rumrunners flourished during Prohibition. Recently, the river lent its name to a police scandal; in 1985 six uniformed officers, members of a ring later nicknamed the "Miami River Cops," raided a docked boat to steal cocaine. Fifteen cops were sentenced to prison on charges of conspiracy and racketeering for the heist and related crimes.
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In recent years major drug traffic on the river appears to have subsided. In 1987 Customs set up Operation Riverwatch, which has seized $189,000 in stolen merchandise and 47 stolen cars. (A hot car worth $300 in the United States can be fenced in Central America for $15,000.) Customs' primary mission was to recruit riverfront informers to report on the drug trade. In three years Customs officers have confiscated 25,000 pounds of cocaine, but some tips were untraceable and too late. Richard Gregorie, former chief assistant U.S. attorney for south Florida, testified before a congressional committee last fall that Colombian cartels smuggled automatic rifles down the river in 1987 and 1988. "I'm sure narcotics and stolen goods are coming up and down the river all the time, " one Miami cop says. "But without confidential informants, who do you check? We've got 500 to 800 boats a week here."
City planners may ultimately put a stop to some of the river trade, legal and criminal. Some business leaders want a riverside park with shops and restaurants. "It's one of the possibilities for rejuvenation of downtown Miami," says Huber Parsons of the Miami River Coordinating Committee. Critics argue that the renewal project seems targeted at driving all Haitian boatmen, including law-abiding shipping, off the river, but Parsons says that charge is "unfair." The river project, he says, "is not directed in any way at the Haitian fleet."
Still, some lawmen are grumbling about spending their time chasing stolen bicycles, and one source says there has been "a great debate about what we consider menial bull----." Wayne Roberts of U.S. Customs says the federal task force and the Miami police crackdown share "the same goal--to run the Haitian boats off the river and make it a more attractive place for business." The job of a Customs officer isn't supposed to be supporting local real-estate development, Roberts says, and Haitians have "a right to ship out of the Miami River." If the plan goes ahead, city fathers may face a diplomatic crisis: how to revive the riverfront and control crime without appearing to punish one of the world's poorest nations.
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