Crime & Police

Looking at an Instagram collage that featured Miami Police Capt. Javier Ortiz smiling for a selfie above a photo of a handcuffed woman on the ground, Civilian Investigative Panel member Courtney Omega had to double check his rank. “This is a captain?” she said during a Tuesday meeting of the…

Nearly two years after a North Miami cop shot an innocent, unarmed black man lying on the ground with his arms in the air, the city’s police department is still reeling. The cop who shot Charles Kinsey, who was just trying to help an autistic man that bystanders mistakenly through had a weapon, has been charged with two felonies and the North Miami Police chief was fired.

BodyRx, an anti-aging clinic that offers testosterone and other hormone treatments, fills an unassuming office on the ground floor of a Coral Gables apartment complex. The lobby is pristine, with gray floors, ornate shelving, and delicate upholstery that wouldn’t seem out of place in a wedding planner’s office. As patients wait to be seen, a TV on the wall plays one testimonial on repeat.

After the mass shooting that left 17 dead at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, most Florida teachers were horrified by the push from President Donald Trump and GOP legislators to arm teachers. But one vocal Parkland faculty member — science teacher Sean Simpson — said he would be open to packing heat in the classroom.

Miami Gardens Sgt. Javier Romaguera’s credibility has been called into question since at least 2009, when he was first accused of filing a false police report. Over the next several years, his reputation became so tarnished the U.S. Attorney’s Office stopped prosecuting his cases. In April 2015, the feds notified his employer they would no longer even use him as a witness.

With fighter jets on its tail, a Cessna nine-seater streaked through the air over Las Marías, a tiny hamlet with unpaved roads and a single airstrip tucked deep in the Honduran jungle. The plane dipped and then came in for a landing. Government troops, who had been alerted not long…

In the past week, South Floridian Ericson Harrell has shared memes claiming that fluoride is dangerous to human beings, that 9/11 might have been orchestrated by the U.S. government, that trusting the government is “a form of mental illness,” and that the Parkland shooting survivors are “paid actors” who helped the feds stage a false-flag attack in February.

In December, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Louisiana shackled 92 Somali immigrants into airplane seats, fired the jet off toward their home country in eastern Africa, allegedly beat the men bloody and forced them to relieve themselves in their seats, mysteriously turned the plane around in Senegal, and…

Yesterday North Bay Village’s new city manager, Marlen Martell, called in Police Chief Carlos Noriega and offered him a choice: Either resign or be fired on the spot. Noriega says he was stunned, and not just because he felt he’d significantly improved the village’s force in his two and a half years on the job.

Surveillance video obtained by blogger Al Crespo shows two City of Miami Police officers repeatedly punching, choking, and tackling an apparently unarmed man after the suspect attempted to run away at a gas station. The clip begins by showing the man in question walking calmly away from a convenience store…

While they’re locked up, inmates rely on books and letters to learn new skills and keep in contact with their loved ones and the outside world. But administrators in charge of the Federal Correctional Complex in Coleman, Florida, have suddenly banned prisoners from receiving books, greeting cards, and letters written in crayon or marker, according to internal memos first obtained by the Families Against Mandatory Minimums. The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida tells New Times it’s researching how to fight the move.

In a federal courtroom in Miami this past Tuesday, Chief Judge K. Michael Moore read the arrest history of local car dealer and former reality TV star Ted Vernon, who had so far avoided conviction on all the charges…

Are Miami PD officers regularly riding around posing as fake Uber drivers, or was this a one-time sting? The department hasn’t responded to multiple calls from New Times about the undercover Uber. A spokesperson for Uber declined to comment but confirmed the company had no knowledge of this incident.

Seven years ago, filmmaker Tiller Russell was preparing to meet with the former Russian mobster at the center of Miami’s craziest true-crime caper of the ’90s. And he was hoping — or more like praying — a guard at a prison deep in a Panamanian jungle wouldn’t screw him over…

In a truly surprising sequence of events, it took less than one month from the massacre at a Parkland high school for Florida lawmakers to take actual legislative action. March 9, Gov. Rick Scott signed a bill allowing law enforcement to petition the courts to take guns away from people thought to be a danger to themselves or others. It was the first firearm restrictions supported by Florida Republicans in more than 20 years.

Audra West was visiting Fort Lauderdale from Texas in April 2014 when she was arrested at the bar the Elbo Room. Described in reports as “very intoxicated” and “belligerent,” she was charged with disorderly intoxication, trespassing, and resisting arrest.

In May 2016, Opa-locka Police Officer Dennis Horn was working an off-duty assignment with his pregnant girlfriend when another local cop pulled up. Horn’s girlfriend hopped in the other officer’s car and chatted for a bit — a simple conversation that left the “insecure” Horn so furious that he grabbed…

The Fort Lauderdale Police Department arrested Shamarly Emanuel Henry Sunday morning after they say the North Dakota resident knocked over a police officer with his Ford truck and then sped away. That altercation was not filmed. But cameras were rolling when FLPD cops arrested Henry, and a clip uploaded to…

Millions flocked to March for Our Lives events this weekend, including tens of thousands to events in South Florida. In Miami Beach, huge crowds waved signs and chanted for stricter gun control, while organizers promised that the fight had “just begun.” But as the push for gun reform gains steam…

James “Michael” Montgomery thought he was going to get hit when a Miami cop pulled in front of his scooter at a busy intersection and tried to make a left turn, despite a sign indicating left turns weren’t allowed. As traffic built up behind him at the green light, Montgomery frantically honked his horn and yelled, “No left turn!”

In January, the Florida Immigrant Coalition shared two videos of U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents storming onto Greyhound buses in the Sunshine State, where they asked passengers for their citizenship “papers” and hauled some away. In one case, agents removed a Jamaican grandmother, and in another they apprehended…