Fresh from a four-day weekend trip to Paris celebrating his 38th wedding anniversary, a jovial Joe Arriola assures his department directors his job is not in jeopardy. “I’m going to be here for a long time,” Miami’s embattled city manager promises his senior staff during a January 31 meeting at…

Melissa Thomas and Renee O’Brien are twentysomething professionals, just the kind of people Miami developers and city leaders hope to attract to the scads of new high-rise condos downtown. So on the evening of February 7, the pair was invited to a soiree hosted by the developer of One Brickell…

Miami Police can’t get enough of you. Really. In January, the Magic City’s PD had to extend the deadline for accepting applications because not enough men and women had registered to join the 1024-member force. Every year the city holds three 30-day sign-up periods, each drawing about 500 would-be cops…

Tal Priel had wanted to own a classic American automobile since he was a teenager. In June 1999, the then-44-year-old New Yorker fulfilled his dream by traveling to Lexington, Kentucky, and purchasing a 1975 gold two-door Buick LeSabre custom convertible for $3000 from its original owner. He spent another $5000…

On Wednesday, January 25, after deliberating less than 30 minutes, a Miami-Dade County jury acquitted 27-year-old Mario Barcia of attempted second-degree murder of a police officer. Miami New Times, which published three articles about the case, was a regular subject of discussion at the trial. Shortly after midnight October 24,…

Donna Halpern sits on a beach chair outside her three-bedroom house, surrounded by a menagerie of cats. The 43-year-old founder of Fairy Tails Inc., a nonprofit animal rescue organization, spends the afternoon this past January 19 awaiting the arrival of a Miami-Dade County Animal Services enforcement officer, who is responding…

Cowboy had everything a dog could ever want. His doting owner, Anays Rodriguez-Porras, dressed him up in whimsical costumes on Halloween and took him on family vacations to Fort Myers Beach and the Keys. “Wherever dogs were allowed, I would take him there,” Rodriguez-Porras recalls during a recent interview in…

This past May 1, Donna Halpern arrived at the Miami-Dade County Animal Services shelter to rescue a Persian cat that had been surrendered by its owner. She arrived at the shelter, walked into the sick ward where the Persian was being held, and was flummoxed by the scene. Two three-by-three-foot…

For the past six years, Alexandria Clayton has patrolled the streets of Hialeah Gardens, a town of about 20,000 wedged between Hialeah on the east and Okeechobee Road on the west. Clayton is in the unique position of being not only black but also the only woman to serve as…

On July 17, 1979, my parents and I climbed into a red four-door Toyota bound for Condega, a rural town in northern Nicaragua. We had missed the last commercial flight out of the country after the Sandinista-led revolution, so we made our getaway on the ground. In Condega, we planned…

To some people it might seem weird that a 27-year-old dude has collected 35 Han Solo frozen-in-carbonite action figures over time. But at least as far as superficial presentation goes, Ralph Vega is about as odd as a one-dollar bill. A husky chap with an encyclopedic knowledge of today’s most…

In late 2004 the Humane Society of the United States released a report condemning deplorable conditions at Miami-Dade County’s animal shelter in Medley. Healthy creatures were being caged next to sick ones. Dogs were choking on short leashes. Shelter workers violently thrashed cats around. And many of the animals were…

On a recent blistering, sticky afternoon, the corner of NW Seventh Street and First Avenue is teeming with vagabond men and women looking for a free meal or an empty cot inside the Camillus House shelter in downtown Miami. The sidewalk smells like a pungent cauldron of salt-crusted dry urine…

Sometime after 3:00 p.m. this past October 27, Miami City Manager Joe Arriola ministered to Hurricane Wilma-weary residents at the Orange Bowl. He also relayed a message to citizens in District Five, which includes much of Overtown and Liberty City. A vote for Richard Dunn II will get nothing done…

She came from the West, a demure Category One, letting us think she was steady, docile, and relatively harmless. But when Hurricane Wilma blew ashore and crossed Florida in a flash, she was a bitch. She toppled a multistory dry dock in Sunny Isles Beach, launched a 30-foot sailboat and…

Click here for the map. 1. Harold Ackerman Cali cartel’s man in Miami. Busted in 1992 along with seven subordinates and 6000 keys of cocaine. Seized ledgers indicated Ackerman’s outfit did $56 million in business in Miami in the ten months before his arrest. He kept a low profile at…

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Real Estate 101. My name is Carl Fisher. Just so you know, I’ve been dead for the past 66 years. Yes, I am an apparition, a figment of your morose imagination. I was one of the legendary hucksters who bamboozled hundreds of hopeful snowbirds out…

On August 30, nearly seven weeks after Sonia Castro filed for divorce from her estranged husband Harry Castro, a suspicious fire raged through the couple’s house on SW 102nd Avenue and 58th Street. No one was injured, but fire inspectors did find traces of an incendiary device, and as a…

For the past several months Keith Wilson has been waging a one-man war against Miami-Dade County’s governmental bureaucracy. It began when building officials condemned his dilapidated warehouse on NW 79th Street and Eighth Court, which Wilson had recently purchased and was slowly refurbishing (apparently too slowly) to house his roofing…

Art Teele is a man of very big appetites, and because of them he is now in very big trouble. As the investigative report below indicates, the once-powerful politician is possessed of a seemingly insatiable craving for all things illicit — adulterous sex, illegal drugs, bribery and extortion. Three weeks…

Roy Thomas McDade, a 60-year-old mortgage broker, lives in the Village of Biscayne Park, a suburban oasis of some 3500 residents tucked between Miami Shores and North Miami. He and his wife Jane, who is also 60 and an insurance company executive, moved into the village back in 1975 and…

Ronald Gotlin has been a law-enforcement officer with the Village of Biscayne Park for 21 years. He began as a part-time patrolman and worked his way through the ranks to captain. In 1998 the Biscayne Park Village Commission, which hires the village’s department heads, rewarded Gotlin by naming him police…