Around 5:30 in the morning on August 18, a young woman sleeping inside her home on Byron Avenue, in North Beach, was woken up by an intruder who had entered her bedroom. The woman didn’t know the man, but he seemed to know her, calling her by her first name…
Saintamens Edwards is an 8-year veteran of what’s supposed to be Miami-Dade’s best and brightest, the Miami-Dade Police Department. Her ex-husband has a job at a shoe store. Edwards, 35, however has now found her feet on the wrong side of the law after allegedly abusing the power of her…
Two years ago last month, 18-year-old Israel “Reefa” Hernandez died after a Miami Beach Police officer who was chasing him away from a building he’d been tagging hit him in the chest with a Taser. Hernandez’s death sparked national outcry about the use of the devices, particularly after Miami-Dade’s Medical…
In Miami-Dade, not even the lowest rung of politics is safe from corruption. Today, a joint task force of the State Attorney’s Office Public Corruption Task Force and the County Office of the Inspector General announced the arrest of David Alberto Carache. Carache’s crimes? Trying to illegally amass a slate of…
Two hours before her redeye Greyhound was scheduled to snort out of the lot, Valerie Bozeman walked into the bus station in Oakland, California. She was traveling light: $93 in her pocket, a tote bag full of underwear and toothpaste courtesy of the Bureau of Prisons, and the blessings of…
The black Harley blazed past two officers parked on the south tip of Key West just after 7 p.m. on Saturday, lighting up a radar gun at 74 mph as its engine gunned noisily through the 30 mph speed zone. When the officers pulled the bike up over, the rider…
Few cases lit up Miami’s news cycle like the tale of “toxic tush” fake doctor Oneal Morris and the victims like Rajee Narinesingh brutally disfigured by injections of “Fix-a-Flat” and cement. But years later, that kind of illegal plastic surgery is still on the rise in Miami — at least according…
Earlier this year, Hector Feliciano drove to Eneida Harter Elementary School to pick up his five-year-old son who’d gotten in trouble over a fight. As they pulled away, though, Feliciano heard a disturbing tale from the kid: A Miami cop at the school had pulled his ear and then handcuffed…
“Although some may consider this to be humorous or insignificant, the FIUPD takes these reports seriously and continues to investigate the matter,” a rep for the Florida International University Police Department tells the school’s student media. The incident that is neither humorous or insignificant is the fact that a suspected…
Tears silently stream down Maria Aguilar’s face as she listens to a vivid description of her daily torment. Sitting at a long wooden table inside an 11th-floor courtroom in Miami’s federal courthouse, the short woman with curly hair tied up in a bun holds hands with three other women while…
For women working at the Moreno Farms packing plant in remote Hendry County, a coveted job working indoors in air conditioning sorting vegetables turned into a living nightmare. The two brothers who ran the place — Miami-raised Oscar and Omar Moreno — and their foreman, Javier Garcia, systemically harassed and…
Receive a speeding ticket? Get into a crash? Accused of a crime? Well, expect to have your phone now blown up with text messages from Florida lawyers. That’s because the Florida Bar Association recently removed its ban on lawyers soliciting potential clients via text. The American Bar Association officially bars…
A little ways up the Florida coast, a little-known company in Melbourne makes a device of great concern to civil liberties activists. Called the “Stingray,” it allows law enforcement officials to track the whereabouts of a specific cell phone — a useful investigative tool that advocates argue also violates privacy…
Back in early July, an Italian-based company called Hacking Team — which had been criticized for profiting by selling malware to regimes with poor human rights records — was itself ironically hacked. Its Twitter account taken over and a 400 gigabyte trove of internal information on the company in the form of emails…
Surely sensing a growing public relations disaster on its hands, Arby’s has decided to try and qualm tensions between them and local police forces following an officer receiving poor costumers service at a Pembrokes Pines location of the roast beef sandwich chain. “As a show of our appreciation and support,…
Following years of legal challenges involving religious inmates in Florida prisons and their right to eat meals based on the dietary principals of their faith, the ACLU of Florida and Council on American-Islamic Relations Florida has filed a lawsuit against the Miami-Dade Corrections and Rehabilitation Department for refusing to serve Muslim inmates…
A controversy involving a Broward County Arby’s employee refusing to serve a Pembrokes Pines police officer has spilled over the county line as Miami-Dade County Police Benevolent Association has called for a nationwide boycott of the roast beef chain. The incident allegedly happened on Monday night when an Pembrokes Pines…
Miami Police Officer Luis Weinad was annoyed: The young cop he was in charge of training had just arrested a man for walking around with crack cocaine and a pipe and sent him off to jail. But instead of filling out an electronic arrest form — as per department policy…
Earlier this summer, the nation was startled to learn that the FBI operates a fleet of more than 100 small planes that gather surveillance around American cities. The planes, an Associated Press investigation revealed, fly low in mysterious circular patterns; their registrations, meanwhile, are often tied to fake companies. “The…
Early on a Tuesday afternoon, Valentina Baiz, an 18-year-old FIU student, was walking in Wynwood with a friend and carrying a large purse. According to a police report, as she strolled east along Northwest 22 Street — just a couple blocks from Panther Coffee and Wynwood’s main business district —…
Not too long ago, South Florida was a prescription painkiller dreamland, luring people from West Virginia to Kentucky down “Oxy Alley” to get millions of pills. At the height of the wave, from 2008 to 2010, Florida doctors purchased nine times more oxycodone than doctors in the other 49 states…
On July 16, Edward “Butch” Foster III walked to the M&M Meat Market a few blocks away from his Homestead home to pick up some items. The 32-year-old father of six never came home. At 4 p.m., two Homestead police officers, responding to a 911 call about a gun-wielding man,…
