The Miami-Dade County Commission must sign off on any grants or funding requests county police ask for. But at today’s commission meeting, elected officials will be asked to retroactively approve a $450,000 Department of Justice grant that MDPD oddly already applied for. Even more…
Today, a group of pro-immigration protesters gathered outside the building housing the offices of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Miami Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart to demand protection for Dreamers, who were brought undocumented to the U.S. as children. Local police quickly began harassing their small group of activists, seven of whom,…
Last Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard a case about whether cops are allowed to access cell-phone location data without a warrant — the latest in a growing legal battle over the limits of police surveillance using new technology.
On Velocity’s South Beach Classics, reality TV star Ted Vernon was known for his short temper and sharp tongue. But behind the scenes, employees and relatives of the Miami-based classic car dealer say he was actually straight-up abusive. In March, a Broward County judge issued a permanent restraining order to keep Vernon away from his estranged wife, who says he routinely beat her.
In December 2012, a Massage Envy employee touched a Coral Springs woman’s vagina while she was getting a routine massage, she says. But when she filed a lawsuit in 2013, the company’s lawyers blamed her for the sexual assault, insisting it was she who behaved negligently.
At 3:30 a.m. on Monday, May 28, 2012, Miami-Dade County Police Officer Luis Perez drove his squad car through the Hammocks District of Miami-Dade County on a hot and humid morning. He passed a teenager, later identified as 16-year-old Sebastian Gregory, wearing a baggy black sweater, black pants, beanie cap,…
One look, and Ken Fusco knew his son was gone. Lying on his childhood bed in dark-washed jeans and a Western-style belt, the garrulous 24-year-old almost looked asleep. But Jason’s skin was ashen, and he wasn’t breathing. Ken’s older son, Michael, carefully moved Jason to the floor and began CPR…
In September 2016, Ari Sweetbaum told the Miami City Commission a devastating story. His parents had bought a house in Coconut Grove in 1980 next to Blanche Park. His mom toiled every day in their yard, building a thriving tropical garden behind the home where Ari grew up.
Authorities say aspiring local rapper Darrish Bernard Martin, AKA Young Bernie, was part of a crime ring that broke into dozens of pharmacies across South Florida and made off with bottles of prescription-strength cough syrup that were then sold to Lil Wayne and other “purple drank” aficionados. In a letter…
For more than two decades, John Rivera was the ideal of what most cops think a police union president should be: He lied constantly, threw tantrums at even the slightest personal insult, and had zero qualms about blaming black kids for getting themselves shot by the officers he represented.
Last week, the FBI released its yearly log of hate crimes reported across the nation. In Florida, the data appears to show that hate-crime reports jumped 33 percent between 2015 and 2016. But that wasn’t the entire story: Many of both the Sunshine State’s and the nation’s largest police departments appear to be neglecting to report hate crimes to the FBI.
When Monroe County Sheriff’s deputies arrived at a small bungalow on a sandy Key Largo side street in October 2015, they found the worse murder scene the Keys had seen in more than two decades: a young couple, Tara Rosado and Carlos Ortiz, brutally executed in their bedroom just a few feet from Rosado’s three young children.
In March 2014, David Velasquez called police to report the theft of his work tools. But when Broward Sheriff’s deputies arrived, he says, the cops were more concerned about his immigration status than the crime. They ended up placing him under arrest, Velasquez says — and breaking his leg while taking him into custody.
For decades, José Miguel Battle Sr. ran La Corporación, a ruthless organized-crime syndicate also known as the Cuban Mafia. It made more than a billion dollars on gambling rings and used arson, beatings, and assassins to deal with its enemies. His son, José Miguel Battle Jr., rose through the ranks to help run the criminal enterprise as the family became one of the richest in Miami.
Prison inmates — especially those awaiting trial — cannot legally consent to sex with guards, supervisors, or anyone else who holds that much power over their lives in government custody. That should be common sense, and it’s why the federal government defines sex between prison guards and inmates as rape. For that same reason, a prison guard at the Federal Detention Center (FDC) in Miami was sentenced Tuesday to eight months’ imprisonment after pleading guilty to raping a woman under his care.
It turns out that repeatedly holding diet-Nazi presidential rallies in a state already known for housing millions of unhinged lunatics might not have been a great way to spend 2016. According to FBI data released yesterday, Florida cops reported 96 hate incidents last year. That’s up from 72 in 2015…
The call came from California. A woman told Coral Springs Police she had recently learned something terrible: A South Florida man had molested her daughter for years. It began when the girl was just 4 years old. An officer noted the information and called the victim, who was then a…
Florida’s law enforcement community is staffed by far too many adult children. Just ask State Trooper Donna Jane Watts. In October 2011, Watts stopped a City of Miami cop traveling 120 mph on the highway and arrested him; in retaliation, 88 police officers used the confidential police driver database to stalk her.
From 2002 until 2009, celebrity hotelier and jet-setter André Balazs owned Miami Beach’s historic Raleigh Hotel on Collins Avenue. And until this past March, he ran the world-renowned Standard Hotels brand, which included South Beach’s Standard Hotel, one of the best-known vacation properties in South Florida. Balazs is a regular on the Miami party circuit, popping up at celebrity get-togethers all over town and hosting events during Art Basel Miami Beach.
John Jackson, a 50-year-old fast-food employee from Fort Lauderdale, was working on a broken-down car at a convenience store around 1 a.m. October 21 when a tall, lanky man in a white tank top approached. The two talked for a few minutes until the man suddenly pulled out a gun, shot Jackson once in the head, and calmly jogged away.
The swagger is back, baby! The University of Miami Hurricanes are winning nationally televised games, threatening a national title run, and pissing off racists by wearing huge gold jewelry. And this past Saturday, delirious Canes fans finally turned Hard Rock Stadium into something approximating the glory days at the Orange Bowl.
Hugo Menjivar was just trying to help out a friend who couldn’t drive home. Instead, he says, he ended up arrested by cops on the scene who demanded his license, ran his name through a database and found a hit for a warrant in California. The only problem: The warrant wasn’t…
