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.
Melanie Lustig walked out of her job at Monkey Jungle in mid-September. The last straw, she says, was scooping up piles of rotten fruit and feces inside an enclosure where the park’s orangutan, Mei, had been kept for days. The New Jersey native had been dismayed for months by the…
Monkey Jungle got its start in the ’30s when Joseph DuMond released a troop of monkeys into a dense patch of South Dade wilderness and then opened it as a one-of-a-kind attraction “where humans are caged and monkeys run wild.” More than seven decades later, the 30-acre roadside park — which allows some monkeys to roam freely while visitors gaze at them from an enclosed path — still makes that promise.
For six years, Ocean 9 Liquor has sold beer, wine, and spirits from its Collins Avenue store, which boasts free delivery and an onsite DJ. That all changed on a Friday last month, a new lawsuit claims, after code enforcement showed up with police and threatened to take store operator Doron Doar to jail if he didn’t immediately shut the whole thing down…
After leaving Indiana for a nursing job at Miami’s Nicklaus Children’s Hospital, Daniele Hoffman says she never fit in because she’s white and doesn’t speak Spanish. In a federal lawsuit against the hospital, Hoffman says staff discriminated against her, called her “gringa” and “skinny white girl,” and insisted on speaking Spanish around her.
Steve Dutton and Tom Lang fell in love with downtown Miami almost at first sight, after taking a cruise that ended here in 2012. When they retired to Miami from Fort Worth, Texas, that year, the couple came to especially love the eclectic mix of restaurants along the two blocks…
The videos were aired on repeat on local cable news channels as Hurricane Irma battered South Florida: small groups of people breaking into shoe stores and leaving with boxes of stolen sneakers. As WPLG and WSVN replayed the incidents, the footage quickly made its way into the national news cycle.
By the time George Miyares was hired as a police officer for the Village of Biscayne Park in March 2013, he’d been rejected by nine other law enforcement agencies across South Florida, a recently filed federal lawsuit alleges.
After getting a call from someone about trash piling up in a Miami canal, environmentalist Dave Doebler turned to Google Maps to get the GPS coordinates. What showed up on the screen shocked him: The massive clump of trash could be seen in satellite images.
For months, Miami Beach commissioners have been waging war against a crime wave they insist is sweeping the city. They’ve voted to curb alcohol sales and close the beach earlier, and agreed to let voters decide whether last call on Ocean Drive should come at 2 instead of 5 a.m.
In the Magic City, Spanish is so prevalent that even Donald Trump, who once chided Jeb Bush for being bilingual, attempted to speak three words of it while campaigning here last year. Nearly 77 percent of Miamians speak a language other than English at home, with Spanish being the most common, according to U.S. Census figures. Forty-three percent of people said they spoke English “less than well.”
Coral Gables takes its image seriously. The city once battled Orlando for the rights to the nickname “the City Beautiful” and this past summer sued Instagram and Facebook to uncover the identity of whoever is running a handful of social media accounts critical of the town.
In early 2016, Hialeah Police Officer Louis Herrera applied for a promotion to sergeant, feeling confident about his chances. He was excited about the job, which promised a raise and a bigger role at the department. But despite scoring well on the required exam, he was wasn’t chosen. The same thing happened when he applied again a year later.
Plenty of South Florida walls are covered with eye-catching murals, but the developers behind one Miami Beach project have another idea for filling the blank space: ginormous LED screens — one of them nearly 91 feet wide and 38 feet tall. The two screens proposed for “1212 Lincoln Road,” a Crescent Heights…
With so much #FakeNews floating around on Facebook and Twitter, the Florida-based PolitiFact has become an invaluable tool for parsing out what’s true and what’s not. The social media giant itself has acknowledged that truth, joining forces with the national fact-checking site late last year in an effort to identify…
Take a look at Miami Beach Commission candidate Mark Samuelian’s campaign platform and you might assume he’s a longtime progressive. The board director of Miami Beach United and former business consultant emphasizes his support for increasing the minimum wage, fighting climate change, and advocating for the city’s LGBT population.
Omar Rivero is standing cross-armed in his light-filled Los Angeles pool house, urging one of his employees to finish a meme about the “Republican Hypocrites of the Year,” when the news breaks: The president has just signed a memo banning transgender people from the military. “Oh, I hate Donald Trump!”…
With the monstrous Hurricane Irma just days away, much of Miami Beach heeded mandatory evacuation orders from officials and headed out. But some of the Beach’s smallest residents — the hundreds of feral cats who call the island home — have no way out. So this week, animal lover Mary Garcia…
In 1992, as Hurricane Andrew roared toward Miami, staff at Zoo Miami found an unlikely place to house the zoo’s 30 flamingos: the men’s bathroom. Ron Magill, then the assistant curator, was walking out the door after helping get the birds situated when he turned around to take one last look…
Jamira Kennedy and her fiance were sitting with their one-month-old son Wednesday morning, talking about loading up on food for Hurricane Irma, when they were startled by two loud knocks at the door. It was the police. Just days before the largest Atlantic storm in history is set to arrive…
Store shelves were running low across South Florida by Tuesday morning as locals hurried to prepare for Hurricane Irma, which is already one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes in history.
Yuri Star was working as an Uber driver when he met Morgan O’Connor, a dreadlocked former Ralph Lauren Polo model and reportedly one-third of a love triangle with Lindsay Lohan and Miley Cyrus. Soon after carting the aspiring musician around West Palm Beach for a night, Star became his full-time caretaker.
