In 2016, after years of financial mismanagement left Opa-locka nearly $8 million in debt, Florida Gov. Rick Scott declared a state of financial emergency and placed city officials on a restrictive spending diet. A state oversight board tasked with keeping the city on track warned that the belt-tightening might take some getting used to…
Sea turtle advocate Jennifer Rotker often walks the beach near her home in Surfside to pick up trash. Finding water bottles, soda caps, and abandoned cups are a regular occurrence, but one item that bugs her most is the plastic straw.
Last September, a Massage Envy client showed up for a 6 p.m. appointment at the spa’s Aventura location. But midway through the session, the woman says, her massage therapist crossed a line: Christian Ramirez massaged her buttocks, placed his fist in the area of her vagina, and touched her breasts.
Threats against public officials are, unfortunately, common in South Florida. But it’s rare they require an ongoing police presence. Yet earlier this week, local political blogger Al Crespo verified anonymous tips that Miami Police officers have been stationed in front of the homes of Mayor Francis Suarez and Commissioner Ken Russell.
In 2009, California artist Scott Gairdner made the “Sex Offender Shuffle,” a viral video parodying Miami-Dade’s treatment of sex offenders. With a catchy beat and ’80s-style cinematography, the four-minute spoof of the 1985 Chicago Bears’ “Super Bowl Shuffle” mocked the way sex offenders are shuffled from one location to another under the guise of public safety.
Coral Gables has only about 50,000 residents, but because of its central location in Miami-Dade, more than 700,000 cars pass through the city daily. And its police now have the ability to monitor a huge number of those vehicles. Since inking a deal to acquire license-plate readers in 2016, the Gables uses more than 30 such devices around the city.
There’s no question the historic Miami-Dade County Courthouse, completed in 1928, is in bad shape. County commissioners have described the building as “hazardous” and “experiencing corrosion, rust, water intrusion, algae and mold penetration, termites, poor air quality, and potential asbestos exposure.” Yet voters have been clear they don’t want to pay to rebuild it.
A new lawsuit filed by the victim says the Broward Sheriff’s Office should have never hired McLeod: According to an incident report from St. Lucie County, the rookie deputy was already a suspect in a sexual battery case from 2015.
Florida voters overwhelmingly approved medical marijuana in late 2016. But for many patients across the state, actually getting medical pot is still almost impossible. In some cases, the state has taken months to approve applications, while suppliers that can’t keep up with the demand are constantly out of stock.
For a guy who once had fangs permanently bonded onto his teeth, who rose from a ring of fire for a televised audience of millions, who made the tabloids after spitting a goblet of blood in Donald Trump’s face, David Heath is actually kind of a wallflower. When he first…
For almost ten years, Pastor Frank Diaz has been feeding the homeless in Overtown. But beginning last year, he says, he and his volunteers have been repeatedly stopped by Miami Police officers and told they’re no longer allowed to hand out food.
Since 2014, a colony of homeless sex offenders has been rapidly growing by the railroad tracks near Hialeah. Nobody wants them there, including the dozens who call the ramshackle camp home. Everyone, from the Homeless Trust to the ACLU to the county commission, agrees the encampment is a public health and safety hazard. But for years, the sex offenders have said that restrictive county laws mean they have nowhere else to legally live and that county officials have failed to solve the problem.
Last week, dozens of protesters picketed a payday lenders’ conference at Donald Trump’s golf resort in Doral to highlight an industry they say preys on the poor. Around the same time, some Miami-Dade commissioners voted to sign a contract with a payroll loan company that wants to do business with county employees — and that has showered commissioners with thousands in donations.
As an educator with more than 30 years in the field, Miami-Dade Commissioner Rebeca Sosa has kept a depressing tally of the increasing number of Miami-Dade children plagued by gun violence. In 2016, more than 30 minors were fatally shot. Last December alone, a 2-year-old, three 16-year-olds, and a 17-year-old lost their lives to guns.
As payday lenders from across America converge on Miami this week for the industry’s annual conference, they’ll be greeted at the airport by signs protesting their arrival.
In 2016, the City of Miami sued the owners of several neglected apartment buildings in the West Grove. For years, tenants had lived in squalid conditions, forced to reckon with mold, raw sewage backups, caved-in ceilings, and other code violations that were never fixed. The city hoped to force the landlords to pay to relocate their renters to alternative housing that was affordable and safe.
Miami Gardens Sgt. Javier Romaguera’s credibility has been called into question since at least 2009, when he was first accused of filing a false police report. Over the next several years, his reputation became so tarnished the U.S. Attorney’s Office stopped prosecuting his cases. In April 2015, the feds notified his employer they would no longer even use him as a witness.
In August 2016, North Miami Beach Mayor George Vallejo weirdly posted a video on Twitter explaining he was the subject of an investigation by the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office. Without getting into any details, Vallejo tweeted that “the truth will come out when the process is complete.”
When a waitress began working at Schnebly Redland’s Winery in June 2016, she says the male employees took notice. At work, two of them would grab and touch her, she claims, describing the sexual acts they wanted to do with her. But when the waitress reported the behavior to management, she says her complaints were ignored.
In a federal courtroom in Miami this past Tuesday, Chief Judge K. Michael Moore read the arrest history of local car dealer and former reality TV star Ted Vernon, who had so far avoided conviction on all the charges…
In a truly surprising sequence of events, it took less than one month from the massacre at a Parkland high school for Florida lawmakers to take actual legislative action. March 9, Gov. Rick Scott signed a bill allowing law enforcement to petition the courts to take guns away from people thought to be a danger to themselves or others. It was the first firearm restrictions supported by Florida Republicans in more than 20 years.
Audra West was visiting Fort Lauderdale from Texas in April 2014 when she was arrested at the bar the Elbo Room. Described in reports as “very intoxicated” and “belligerent,” she was charged with disorderly intoxication, trespassing, and resisting arrest.
