Vagner Dapresa walked into the West Flagler convenience mart looking for justice. He’d been pumping gas the night before when another customer had shouted at him: “You’ve been looking at me a lot — and I don’t like faggots looking at me.” The remark stung Dapresa, a 31-year-old genderqueer Cuban-American…
In 2007, a jury convicted Liberty City native Harrel Braddy of kidnapping a 5-year-old and leaving her to die on the side of Interstate 75, where she was eaten alive by alligators. Eleven jurors believed Braddy should be put to death, but one disagreed. Thursday, the Florida Supreme Court vacated Braddy’s death sentence, calling it unconstitutional under a 2016 U.S. Supreme Court decision that invalidated the state’s sentencing practices.
For well over a year, Florida environmentalists and water protectors have been sounding the alarm about the Sabal Trail Transmission Pipeline, a behemoth, 515-mile natural gas pipeline cutting through the state’s vulnerable wetlands and above the Floridan Aquifer, our largest source of drinking water. At least 28 protesters have been arrested for civil disobedience as they rallied against the pipeline’s construction.
Each year, about 5,000 Floridians are sent to one of the state’s seven mental health facilities. Some have been committed under the Baker Act for evaluation and treatment. Others are defendants found too mentally incompetent for a trial or guilty by reason of insanity. A smaller number are sexually violent predators deemed too dangerous to roam the streets.
Jessica Buhl was visiting the squirrels at Stephen P. Clark Government Center one day after work when she spotted one she’d never noticed before. The bushy-tailed female was beautiful, except for her snaggletooth. Buhl, an office administrator who works nearby at Ernst & Young, knew the flaw was far from…
After he was fired for sending dozens of racist, homophobic, misogynistic, and pornographic messages from his city email account, Miami Beach Police Lt. Alex Carulo apologized to internal investigators. “It was foolish, poor judgment on my part, and I accept full responsibility,” he said. “It is what it is.”
Over the past few years, Miami-Dade County Public Schools began phasing out hard-line discipline in favor of more effective policies. Thanks in part to the efforts of local advocacy groups, the district found alternatives to arrests, stopped issuing out-of-school suspensions, eased its zero-tolerance stance on drugs, and embraced a restorative justice approach.
When Sean Gallagan was named Miami-Dade’s principal of the year in 2011, administrators lauded the leader of George T. Baker Aviation Technical College for his humanitarian work in Haiti and resourcefulness in getting American Airlines to donate a $6 million plane to the district. Clearly pleased with his abilities, the district…
Finding affordable housing in Miami has never been harder, and the problem affects the whole city: It worsens traffic gridlock by forcing workers to live at the edges of the county, drives out bright college grads who would otherwise stay, and can even prevent domestic violence victims from leaving their abusers.
Miami’s police union president, Lt. Javier Ortiz, notoriously said he had “no regrets” after posting a woman’s photos and contact information online and encouraging his Facebook followers to harass her. But when the case came before the city’s independent police oversight board this March, almost everyone agreed his actions reflected poorly on the police department.
As another hot AF summer commences in Miami, mosquitoes will once again be unavoidable. Testing is still underway as scientists work to develop a Zika vaccine, but in the meantime, public health officials’ best advice for preventing transmission seems to be just telling people not to get bit. In South…
Records show that everyone in Vernon’s immediate family, from Ziel to his first wife to all three of his children, have accused him of domestic violence.
Three days after state lawmakers failed to pass a bill establishing rules for medical marijuana, Miami Springs Vice Mayor Bob Best shook his head at a council meeting Monday night as the city attorney explained it was time to extend the city’s moratorium on dispensaries.
When Gianni Versace was shot on the front steps of his Ocean Drive mansion in 1997, Miami and the rest of the world mourned the loss of one of fashion’s most iconic and influential personalities. His horrific murder was such a defining event that many residents still think of his death as a way to mark the passage of time, almost like a local BC/AD.
Renting out your house on Airbnb is a good way to make some extra money, but it can also be a real pain in the ass. Your tenants might be deranged meth heads, but even if they aren’t, your neighbors will probably still complain that the guests’ rolling suitcases are too noisy. And in certain parts of Miami, you could be fined up to $20,000 just for listing your place.
It’s easy to forget when you’re sipping a $12 Miami Vice on a bargain-bin weekend cruise to the Bahamas, but cruising can be sketchy business.
Last fall, as Miami Beach Mayor Phil Levine decried Ocean Drive as a “disgusting, terrible place,” he tasked Commissioner Ricky Arriola with coming up with a plan to fix it. Among the recommendations were more police, fewer umbrellas, and a crackdown on open containers.
Two years ago, a 10-year-old from New York died in the swimming pool on the Norwegian Gem. Witnesses who saw the girl drown said the cruise line clearly messed up: One woman said passengers who were doctors and nurses began life-saving efforts while cruise workers “watched and looked panicked.”
When Moonlight won Best Adapted Screenplay at this year’s Oscars, Miami playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney gave a shout-out to his hometown, waxing eloquently that “we can really be here and be somebody, two boys from Liberty City up here onstage representing the 305.” By the end of the night, when the film won Best Picture…
Everyone knows parking in Miami Beach is a nightmare. You can waste hours of your life circling for a precious curbside spot, only to have your horrendous parallel-parking skills cause a miniature traffic jam when you finally do come across a space. And God forbid your phone dies before it’s time to renew your parking session.
In a broken-down speedboat off the coast of Cuba, Marty and Dana Gottesfeld watched the sun creep closer to the horizon. Salty wind whipped Dana’s chestnut-colored hair as her husband buckled himself into an orange life jacket. The facts were stark and unavoidable: Their boat was stuck in the middle…
Miami’s spring break 2017 was one for the books. It began with a bikini-clad tourist twerking on a cop, continued with a gravity-defying feat of twerking atop a car on the MacArthur Causeway, and ended with a clubgoer twerking on the bumper of a car stopped in traffic near Ocean Drive after last call.
