Javier Ortiz has led the City of Miami Fraternal Order of Police since 2011. In that time, he has racked up excessive-force complaints, been sued a few times, and said demonstrably racist things on social media. He has also mysteriously escaped punishment after multiple Internal Affairs investigations and nearly lost his job after he got caught harassing a police critic online. He appeared to be made from Teflon.
Before the federal government sued California in an attempt to open the state to private-prison contractors, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement sought the advice of GEO Group, the Boca Raton-based, multibillion-dollar private-detention-facility corporation. Mother Jones broke news of the close ties between GEO and ICE’s legal team this past Friday. New Times has…
When Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez made a snap decision in 2017 to capitulate to Donald Trump’s threats and force the county to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, lawyers warned that innocent people were going to wind up getting hurt. The head of the Florida American Civil Liberties Union…
In 2014, New Times writer Terrence McCoy found 15 Miami men who’d been accused of murder on the A&E TV show the First 48 — and later walked free because they’d been wrongfully accused. Taiwan Smart was one of those men: In 2009, Smart contacted the City of Miami Police Department to…
For over three decades, the coral rock house at 900 Collins Ave. was a medical office run by Edward Roth, one of the first Jewish doctors in Miami Beach. Over the weekend, drawings of swastikas were found on the home.
Like all great conspiracy theorists, #QAnon believers hang on to their ideas whether or not there’s a shred of evidence. QAnon is the hilariously false theory that Donald Trump is secretly fighting a war within the government to arrest high-level Democratic pedophiles, and that a top Trump operative known as “Q”…
Peter Sean Brown was born in Philadelphia and is a U.S. citizen. But that fact apparently didn’t matter to Monroe County Sheriff Rick Ramsay, whose deputies illegally held Brown in a jail overnight because they thought he should be deported to Jamaica, a country where he’s never lived…
This past Friday, Broward Sheriff’s Office SWAT member Matt Patten wore a QAnon conspiracy-theory patch while greeting Vice President Mike Pence at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. Today Patten was reprimanded and demoted from the SWAT team and BSO’s Office of Homeland Security.
Last week, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement published midyear crime statistics that show Miami-Dade County is still the worst place in the state to be a victim of a crime. The data shows that in the first six month of 2018, Miami-Dade County has solved the fewest percent of reported crimes of any county in the state.
DJ Khaled is many things to many people. Musician. Record producer. DJ. Social media maven. Fashion icon. Business mogul. And now he can add “alleged cryptocurrency fraudster” to his resumé. Today the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced the Miami hip-hop star paid $152,725 in penalties and settlements after it…
How desperate are people for dental care in Miami-Dade County? Apparently so desperate that two locals were able to operate a dental clinic out of a bus and a white Toyota hatchback SUV in a parking lot a few feet from State Road 836. Miami-Dade County Police announced today they arrested 37-year-old Daniela Sulbaran Gonzalez and 44-year-old Victor Bernal for allegedly operating an unlicensed bus dentistry service.
It’s legal to walk up to the U.S. border and apply for asylum. But U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents decided to fire smoke grenades and tear-gas canisters at members of a migrant caravan at the Tijuana border over the weekend. Under international law, tear gas is a chemical weapon…
In 2016, North Miami real estate broker Anis Blemur ran to replace State Sen. Gwen Margolis in Florida’s 38th District. He did this despite having an incredibly checkered background of financial mismanagement, including allegations that he defrauded multiple clients of tens of thousands of dollars.
Conditions at the Opa-locka Police Department are so bad the city can barely keep its officers employed. After a debilitating citywide budget cut of 20 percent, ten police positions were eliminated and every officer on the payroll took a 10 percent salary reduction. As the Miami Herald reported in September, some cops are wearing ripped uniforms and driving donated cars with over 100,000 miles on them. The police headquarters building is so rife with leaks and mold that officers have moved their operations to City Hall.
Local TV news still makes Miami out to be a screaming, bloody hellscape where strangers are mugged constantly and venturing outside one’s apartment is an act of certain suicide. A few local governments (i.e., Miami Beach) seem hellbent on convincing residents their towns are dangerous and need more cops, stricter laws, and all-seeing surveillance panopticons.
In 2013, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division whacked the City of Miami Police Department for disproportionately mistreating and using excessive force against black and brown residents. Six years later, DOJ is still monitoring city cops. But there are clearly still issues. Miami’s Civilian Investigative Panel, a group of…
Police departments are supposed to submit hate-crime data to the FBI every year. In 2016, Miami-Dade County Police — the largest force in the Southeast, overseeing a population of 2.7 million people — reported that just a single hate crime occurred all year. That number seemed low, so New Times last year asked MDPD Director Juan Perez about it…
Internal Affairs concluded that the allegations of improper procedure and discourtesy against Ortiz were not sustained. During his tenure as a City of Miami police officer, Ortiz has racked up 38 citizen complaints regarding 56 different allegations of misconduct, according to his IA summary obtained by New Times. Only six of those complaints have been sustained (five for improper procedure and one for discourtesy).
Garland Creedle is an American citizen. But he nevertheless spent a night in a Miami-Dade County jail waiting to be deported in 2017, thanks to a mistake by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. So, he and the American Civil Liberties Union sued ICE and Miami-Dade County…
Reviews on Google and Yelp show Pearson isn’t the only one to fall victim to the phone-snatching scam at Rácket Wynwood.
Last week, the Miami Gardens Police Department fired Sgt. Javier Romaguera, a cop with a long history of unethical and arguably illegal behavior. Hired in 2006, he was accused three years later of filling out a bogus police report, saying he had street contact with a man who was actually in jail at the time…
In April 2017, Lewis Bennett and Isabella Hellman, two dual British and Australian citizens, set sail on a yacht from St. Maarten to South Florida. According to federal prosecutors, they made a pit stop in Cuba weeks later, on May 14, 2017. But by the next morning, U.S. Coast Guard agents found Bennett floating…
