In 2012, Homeland Security Bureau operatives within Miami-Dade County Police started tracking the social-media accounts of Occupy Miami protesters. The cops tracked Occupy protesters’ every day, sending out “situational awareness” bulletins to specific officers when activists hosted events as innocuous as a “Jazz Night.” Muhammed Malik, a local civil rights…
Annie had three evil spirits inside her. Well, actually, two: One was pregnant with a cute little baby evil spirit. Annie, a tough, athletic 31-year-old, learned of the problem during a walk near her Manhattan apartment, when a slightly chubby, blond teen dressed in a long, loose-fitting shirt stopped her…
According to a City of Miami Police arrest report, Ryan Gellineau was booked June 2, 2013, on charges of resisting an officer with violence, a third-degree felony. Officer Stanley Mike, who wrote the arrest affidavit, says he and another cop were set to arrest Gellineau’s girlfriend when Gellineau “charged” at the officers…
The Miami-Dade Police Department has already applied for a $500,000 Department of Justice grant to fly planes over the county that can record and track the movements of the city’s population. These “wide-area surveillance” systems were originally developed to track insurgents planting car bombs during the Iraq War — but now the technology is being used on American civilians.
After he was fired for sending dozens of racist, homophobic, misogynistic, and pornographic messages from his city email account, Miami Beach Police Lt. Alex Carulo apologized to internal investigators. “It was foolish, poor judgment on my part, and I accept full responsibility,” he said. “It is what it is.”
In the last year, Miami Beach Commissioner Kristen Rosen Gonzalez positioned herself as a liberal fighting for the rights of disadvantaged black and brown Americans. At a protest against Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez’s decision to comply with President Trump’s sanctuary-city ban, Rosen Gonzalez swore to protect the city’s massive…
The Miami Beach Police Department’s basic mission statement tells officers to conduct themselves with “honor, courage, integrity.” The slogan is routinely plastered on official city and department documents. But when Lori Freedline, a civilian employee at MBPD, hung signs in her office that encouraged employees to act with “integrity” and to beware of “karma,” her boss wasn’t happy.
After the Freddie Gray riots in 2015, Baltimore residents began noticing small planes circling the city. As reporters later uncovered, Baltimore Police had quietly employed a “wide-area surveillance” system, which uses Cessna planes to constantly record the movements of an entire city. Police never bothered to tell the public they was using the invasive technology…
The shots rang out before either cop could reach for his holster. The only thing the two Broward Sheriff’s deputies could do was call for help. “We’re shot!” came a voice over police radio. Then it was quiet. When the bullets stopped flying that November night, Dep. Corey Carbocci lay…
In June 2009, Miami Beach Police Officer Adam Tavss fatally shot two people in four days. Tavss resigned the next year after testing positive for marijuana and was later caught running a marijuana growhouse. In 2011, he was cleared of wrongdoing in the shooting of the first victim, an unarmed tourist named Husein Shehada.
This Memorial Day weekend was a test for Miami Beach. For the first time, the city scheduled a massive air show during the unofficial Urban Beach Week, with the not-so-secret goal of ending the gathering that draws thousands of mostly black hip-hop fans to South Beach. Could the two coexist?
Last November, Miami resident Mario Javier Cordoba sued the City of Miami and two of its cops, Reynaldo Irias and Yesid Ortiz, for false arrest, battery, and civil-rights violations. Cordoba says the two MPD officers chucked him in the back of a cop car just for trying to record his…
This past March 23, singer Alicia Keys headlined the grand-opening party for the Porsche Design Tower, an ultraluxury condominium complex in Sunny Isles Beach built by father-and-son Miami developers (and former Trump business partners) Michael and Gil Dezer. The event was a spectacular display of wealth at the Porsche Tower, a massive steel-gray building filled with spartan German decor, billionaire investors, and elevators that lift whole cars right into residents’ condo units.
For the past year, Brandon Russell has saluted the flag and worn the uniform of the Florida National Guard while serving his country as a private first class. But in his suburban Tampa apartment, Russell and his three roommates pledged allegiance to a whole different ideal. Russell’s bedroom was decorated with neo-Nazi and white supremacist propaganda and a framed photo of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. His garage was full of guns, ammo, and high-powered materials for bomb-making.
Miami’s police union president, Lt. Javier Ortiz, notoriously said he had “no regrets” after posting a woman’s photos and contact information online and encouraging his Facebook followers to harass her. But when the case came before the city’s independent police oversight board this March, almost everyone agreed his actions reflected poorly on the police department.
The Coral Gables Police Department, which patrols one of the safest, richest parts of Miami-Dade County, inexplicably has two military-grade, tank-like armored trucks called Mine-Resistant, Ambush-Protected trucks (MRAPS). The department got the truck from the U.S. Department of Defense, which outfits local cops with military-grade equipment for free, so long…
Records show that everyone in Vernon’s immediate family, from Ziel to his first wife to all three of his children, have accused him of domestic violence.
Sportswriters are wringing their hands and moralizing over Robby Anderson, a New York Jets wide receiver who was arrested Sunday night at the Rolling Loud hip-hop festival. Anderson, 23, was booked on charges of resisting an officer with violence and obstruction; an arrest report New Times obtained claims…
On November 2, 2016, the Professional Law Enforcement Association, a police union, requested Miami-Dade County Police airport cop Mark Allen’s body-camera footage from the week of September 7 that year. According to MDPD bylaws, the department must preserve nonevidentiary footage for a minimum of 90 days — the union requested copies of Allen’s footage in less than 60.
Charlise Stallworth was driving in Broward County when a City of Miami Police car driven by Sgt. Earnest Lawrence pulled in front of her, activated its emergency lights, and stopped suddenly. Stallworth, driving with her teenage daughter, slammed on the brakes and changed lanes.
Mention Bal Harbour to a random Miamian, and two things come to mind: an über-luxury shopping mall and one of the most notorious speed traps on A1A. Violent drug-related shootings would certainly not appear on that list.
In December 2014, Danielle Venezia says, she was sitting in the passenger’s seat of a friend’s car on SW 63rd Court in South Miami when her fiancé walked up, ripped open the door, and yanked her out of the car. Venezia says he then began “shoving her around.”
