When planning the city, Miami’s then all-white city government forced early black residents into a segregated area known as “Colored Town.” Over time, that area grew into Overtown — a thriving community that attracted local black artists, politicians, and celebrities. But in the 1960s, local officials decided to cram…
Florida’s law preventing ex-felons from voting is an actual Jim Crow law that’s somehow still on the books. It was passed in 1868 because white supremacist lawmakers were pissed off at the 14th Amendment granting black people citizenship. Thanks to the efforts of an activist group led by ex-felon Desmond Meade, Florida voters will finally be able to cast ballots on a constitutional amendment to restore voting rights to more than 1.5 million former felons this November.
Kim Hill is one of two activists who have been arrested and banned from City of Homestead public meetings simply for asking for reforms at the police department. In 2016, both Hill and activist James Eric McDonough told WSVN that they’d been arrested and carted out of city hall on three occasions, simply for asking for changes at the police department.
As of 2015, the Miami Police Department reported in a statewide audit that a whopping 2,243 rape and sexual-assault kits were sitting untested on city shelves collecting dust — the highest number of untested rape kits for a single agency in Florida. That meant 2,243 victims had reported a rape…
HIV-positive activist Josh Robbins first warned in November 2016 that Publix, Florida’s beloved supermarket giant, was refusing to provide its workers with drugs that prevent HIV transmission. Nearly a year and a half later, the grocery chain has still not answered why it has adopted this health-care policy…
In a sane, moral, or just world, Florida House Speaker Richard Corcoran would be forced to resign for the advertisement his political action committee just released. It’s that bad. Honestly, he should resign anyway. The ad is basically a ripoff of D.W. Griffith’s 1915 pro-Ku Klux Klan film Birth of a Nation…
City of Miami Police Officer Dermis Hernandez casually tried to board a plane yesterday en route from Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport to Costa Rica. He nearly made it. But instead, federal officials say, he was arrested just before boarding the flight for running a Ponzi scheme while working as a cop.
Mel Fisher is the closest thing Florida has to Indiana Jones. Recently retired Floridians adopt the state’s Jimmy Buffett-inspired, faux-pirate persona after spending 30 years selling renters insurance in Denver, but Fisher was the real deal. He spent his life diving for pirate treasure and most famously hit the mother lode…
As the director of judicial affairs at the University of Miami from 2008 to 2016, Associate Dean of Students William A. “Tony” Lake investigated rape and sexual assault complaints. When he left in 2016, many assumed it was connected to a mishandled rape case that drew national press. Lake punished then-student David Jia for allegations that police later found to be false and was also separately accused of mishandling a different case by telling a victim to simply “avoid” her alleged rapist on campus.
The Florida Department of Corrections remains adamant that “Operation PUSH,” a statewide prison-labor strike designed to force state officials to treat prisoners better, never actually happened, even though prisoner-rights groups released a statement last week about the action. They say prisoners in more than a dozen facilities either went on…
Accused rapist and ultrapopular South Florida rapper Kodak Black live-streamed his own arrest last week. A masked squad from the Broward County Sheriff’s Office descended on his Pembroke Pines mansion as Black and a large entourage of friends, including Black’s own toddler — named King Khalid — hung out in a…
Despite New Times basically devoting an entire beat to Miami Police Capt. Javier Ortiz’s shameful exploits over the last decade, he’s only managed to fail upward, ascending the ranks from lieutenant last year. While he’s technically stepped “down” from running Miami’s Fraternal Order of Police union, he remains the…
Last week, Florida House Speaker Richard Corcoran sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen asking her to investigate two of Florida’s most prominent Democratic leaders, St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman and Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, for running “sanctuary cities” that refuse to detain immigrants on behalf of the…
In 2015, residents living near Lake Carmen, a manmade body of water in unincorporated Northwest Miami-Dade, complained that a landowner had tried to fill in the lake with toxic soil, which included traces of reclaimed asphalt, tile, lead, arsenic, and petroleum. But the county’s Department of Environmental Resources Management (DERM) says it’s…
The Knight Foundation holds massive sway in Miami. It’s one of the biggest nonprofits in America and funds a huge number of journalistic, charity, and community initiatives around town. The foundation’s last Miami program director, Matt Haggman, recently resigned to run for Congress and has been a leader in early…
Overtown residents were already worried about the proposed Miami Innovation District and the under-construction Miami WorldCenter, both of which cross into the historically black neighborhood. The once-segregated area has been systematically destroyed by terrible urban planning for decades. Now locals worry that without better regulations, the new buildings will drive up real-estate prices and push out longtime residents.
Floridians still don’t have an answer to what might be the most pressing statewide political question of 2018: What does Bill Nelson stand for? After Nelson voted yesterday to end the brief government shutdown without forcing Republicans to agree to protect undocumented immigrants, Floridians still don’t know the answer to that question…
These days, the U.S. Army predominantly recruits from Southern states. According to 2013 enlistment data, Georgia and Florida have two of the nation’s highest per-capita rates of locals joining the Army. However, a study released earlier this month by researchers at the Citadel, one of the military’s major universities, issues a warning.
Blanco laid the violence on thick to convince male kingpins around her that she was not to be messed with.
Miami, much like its tourist-haven compatriot Last Vegas, regularly gets flooded with odd groups of convention delegates. Typically, those attendees represent boring industries like the National Corn Growers’ Association. But this week, Miami has been invaded by Bitcoin and cryptocurrency investors.
When a series of disturbances and insurrections erupted across state prisons nationwide in 2016 on the anniversary of New York’s 1971 Attica prison riots, the Florida Department of Corrections (FDOC) danced around acknowledging whether a set of incidents that had occurred in the Sunshine State were related to the nationwide movement.
Bill Nelson has been representing Florida in Washington, D.C., since 1978. He was promoted from U.S. representative to senator in 2001. But he might lose a reelection bid this year to Florida’s governor and ageless Lich-King, Rick Scott, unless the 75-year-old can make Florida voters feel some enthusiasm for the scarecrow-made-from-used-mulch that is Bill Nelson.
