See, one of the funny things about Sam's story is that the theatre he was performing in had to be the Jackie Gleason Theater of the Performing Arts on Miami Beach; this means they almost certainly took him to the Mount Sinai E.D., on the other side of the sandbar and a little north, instead of to the 'mainland'.
So there's a disturbance over in Miami proper - Overtown, and/or Liberty City, and/or the west end of Coconut Grove... and they get this little Jewish boy in rags who's talking about falling off barricades, and they're thinking OMG riots are spreading?!?
(Just to make it clear - there's two miles of bridge and a lot of non-wadeable water between Miami and Miami Beach, at either end appropriate to the story.)