Jul 24, 2006 2:25 am US/Eastern
The Real Miami Vice-Miami's Cocaine Cowboys
Art Deco-How a TV Show Helped Save A Treasure
Part 2
by Robb Hanrahan
MIAMI BEACH (CBS4 News) ―
What we saw on the TV screen with Miami Vice was in some ways a pale reflection of real life when it came to crime in South Florida. The TV show captured the flavor of the real streets in the late 70's and early 80's, when drugs flowed into South Florida and the blood flowed from the drug related murders.
The violence reflected the intensity of the battle for the drug money, and at one point, so many people were dying that Miami won the title of Murder Capital USA. At one point, the medical examiners office literally ran out of space in the body room, and it was forced to a rent refrigerated truck to store the bodies.
That, combined with the crime and disruption caused by the Mariel boatlift, which brought many people released from Cuban prisons to Miami, and the violence of the Liberty City riots, caused Time magazine to do a cover story which labeled Miami "Paradise Lost".
The drug money and the shootouts became things of legend, and eventually fodder for Michael Mann and his idea for a TV series about the drug trade.
Mann set the series in Miami, and while city officials winced to see the city portrayed as a drug capital, the publicity the show generated, along with the highly stylized look it gave South Florida, somewhat ironically used the drug problems to help the region gain new popularity as a tourist destination; a popularity which continues today.
The intensity of the cocaine cowboy days has ended. The drug trade continues, but it's more about money than murder. The large cartels have been mostly dismantled, and the street violence is an unwelcome memory.
(© MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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