After continued efforts to increase safety and security at Ultra Music Festival, Miami police report a decrease in arrests from last year. Felony arrests, however, were up almost 50 percent. For the second year in a row, former Miami Beach police chief Ray Martinez served as the festival’s head of…
Guadalupe Ortiz walked out of the Ocean Drive hotel where she works into a warm March evening on the iconic beachfront stretch. After years of living and working in South Beach, Ortiz has seen her fair share of drunken debauchery: spring break, Memorial Day weekend, run-of-the-mill Friday nights. But the…
Tray Walker never had an easy path to NFL glory. After starring at Miami Northwestern alongside future star Teddy Bridgewater, he landed at a small college in Texas. His raw athletic ability netted him a draft pick with the Baltimore Ravens last year, but then his dad died the very…
Hidden cameras were rolling as Officer Jose Maldonado Dick, a seven-year veteran assigned to Wynwood, slid into a McDonald’s parking lot and calmly watched as a drug deal went down. A few days later, he did it again — this time even getting out of his car to offer the…
After a tumultuous spring break weekend in South Beach that included the fatal shooting of a 20-year-old man on Ocean Drive, massive brawls that shut down the iconic street, the city’s concocting a new plan to stop the madness. A citizen petition, meanwhile, is pushing for new littering rules after…
Spring Break in South Beach got off to a chaotic start this weekend, with Miami Beach Police forced to shut down Ocean Drive on Friday night as a wave of brawls spilled through the crowd. The next night, the revelry turned bloody. As horrified partiers looked on, a 20-year-old named…
Since arriving as Miami Beach’s new police chief in 2014, Dan Oates has mostly steered clear of the scandals that plagued his predecessors in the high-profile department, the odd off-duty pay raise and fatal shooting during Art Basel aside. Back in Aurora, Colorado, though, where Oates spent nearly a decade…
12,000 people — about one in eight inmates — are currently being held in solitary confinement in Florida state prisons according to the American Civil Liberties Union. The organization, along with a coalition of civil rights organizations, faith leaders and advocates for the mentally ill, is now calling on the U.S…
David Rivera is the absolute last name Marco Rubio wanted to see in headlines four days before the biggest election of his life. Because whenever the former U.S. representative and longtime Rubio buddy makes the news, it’s for increasingly sordid allegations and federal investigations. Today is no different. Rivera is…
Trevor Darling and Jahair Jones, two offensive lineman for the University of Miami Hurricanes, found themselves behind bars last night for the dumbest reason. The pair were basically standing in the middle of the road, and were arrested after refusing orders by police to get out of the road several…
It’s finally official. Cameras are coming to the bodies of Miami-Dade’s cops. Three-and-a-half years after the idea was initially proposed, the Miami-Dade County Commission has voted to approve a program to equip county officers with body cameras. “With today’s approval, approximately 1,000 Miami-Dade police officers will be equipped with body-worn…
Herb Smith, a lanky 23-year-old, drove a slick crimson Audi through the streets of Fort Lauderdale while a friend rode shotgun. At 4 p.m. last October 7, they caught a red light. A Broward County Sheriff’s patrol car stopped beside them at the intersection. When the officer glanced over, he…
As New Times reported last week, Carlos Gutierrez – the only candidate who has filed to run for sheriff in Collier County in the upcoming November election – was fired from Key Biscayne’s police force for repeatedly falling asleep in his cruiser in 2007. But it turns out that’s not…
The night of May 3, 2014, in the capital of Trinidad and Tobago, federal prosecutor Dana Seetahal sat before a slot machine. Gambling was her favorite form of relaxation and one of her only hobbies. Her law enforcement career had left her little time for much else, and the brainless…
In early 2007, a self-identified “disappointed but hopeful resident” of Key Biscayne typed out a letter to the police chief about something they found appalling. The resident had noticed a cop car in front of the ritzy, members-only Grand Bay Club and was happy to see the police department patrolling the…
For Brandon “Mighty Mouse” Desrosier, boxing was a redemption. After a rough childhood in West Palm Beach spent bouncing in and out of youth detention facilities, a turning point came when a police officer gave him a choice: Either go back to jail for his latest street fight, or start…
Earlier this month, Miami Police union chief Javier Ortiz used his Facebook account to post the cell phone number of a woman who had filmed an officer speeding. He urged his followers to call her. Now, in response, a group identifying itself as part of the hacking collective Anonymous has posted Ortiz’s personal information through social media, a practice known as doxxing.
Thanks to Scarface, Miami Vice and Rakontur, everyone knows that 1980s Miami was the world capital of illegal substances. But few realize that sixty years before the Cocaine Cowboys, another brand of underworld smugglers had already turned South Florida into the Wild West. At the height of Prohibition, Dade County…
Some boxers enter the ring scowling dead-eyed at their opponents. But Stan Stanisclasse could never pull it off. His smile came too easily — it’d just creep unbidden across his face. So he began most bouts with a little dance instead, stomping and sliding his feet back and forth in…
King Carter was six years old. He played Pop Warner football for the 75-pound Junior Bandits and had a smile that lit up his neighborhood. This weekend, he became the latest shockingly young kid killed in Miami by gun violence. The young victim has now become the latest rallying cry…
Cuba is one of the richest pipelines on earth for world-class baseball talent. It’s also one of the most treacherous places for Major League Baseball teams to recruit. Thanks to the embargo, defectors have to risk perilous journeys across the Gulf and through Latin America before they can snag big-money…
Fifteen-year-old Federico Tamborrel was learning to drive on the Turnpike last January with his dad riding shotgun when he swerved to avoid another car. That’s when he saw what every student driver dreads most: Flashing blue-and-red lights in his mirror. But the traffic stop soon turned into a whole different…
