Teachers of the year, they were not: one was accused of punching a 17-year-old girl who refused to have sex with him and the second, of sending inappropriate texts and nude photos to male students. Late last month, both Miami-Dade educators were banned from teaching in Florida ever again. The…
Forty-three-year-old Alex Sanchez spent just one night in jail last October after he was arrested for growing weed at his house in Kendall. When he returned home, the electricity wasn’t working. Sanchez called to figure out what was up and stumbled upon a little-known county ordinance that prevented him from…
On a Friday in late March of 2012, an exasperated mother drove her teenage daughter to the Florida Keys Children’s Shelter in Tavernier, a residential program with room for up to 18 kids on the island of Key Largo. By all accounts, it was a difficult ride. Twice, the girl…
Todd Glaser steps onto the Sea Tabby, a wood-trimmed 1938 Mathis Trumpy yacht docked off Allison Island, a spit of land off Miami Beach just north of the Fontainebleau hotel. As he sits at a table toward the back, he calls out for a Johnnie Walker. An older, fully uniformed…
We’re a third of the way through 2016, and what a time to be alive. We’ve got hoverboards that actually hover, “super bananas” that can prevent blindness, and technology for self-driving cars that is getting better by the day. But this is America, and our appetite for consumerism knows no…
A typical student in Miami-Dade public schools is twice as likely to bump into a cop in the hallway than a school counselor. That’s one eye-opening revelation nonprofit group The 74 gleaned from a public records request to 10 of the country’s largest school districts, four of which are in Florida…
Don Festge, a hospitality and tourism teacher at Alonzo and Tracy Mourning Senior High School in North Miami, had already been toying with the idea of running for office when he traveled to Tallahassee in January. It was Rep. Frank Artiles who pushed him into the fray. Unable to arrange a meeting…
The seas are rising. And Miami is in grave danger of going under. Anyone who lives in South Florida and isn’t living in a Marco Rubio-sized bubble of denial knows these facts by know, and the national press has been pounding the story into the ground over recent months. But…
Guadalupe Ortiz walked out of the Ocean Drive hotel where she works into a warm March evening on the iconic beachfront stretch. After years of living and working in South Beach, Ortiz has seen her fair share of drunken debauchery: spring break, Memorial Day weekend, run-of-the-mill Friday nights. But the…
Hidden cameras were rolling as Officer Jose Maldonado Dick, a seven-year veteran assigned to Wynwood, slid into a McDonald’s parking lot and calmly watched as a drug deal went down. A few days later, he did it again — this time even getting out of his car to offer the…
After a tumultuous spring break weekend in South Beach that included the fatal shooting of a 20-year-old man on Ocean Drive, massive brawls that shut down the iconic street, the city’s concocting a new plan to stop the madness. A citizen petition, meanwhile, is pushing for new littering rules after…
Growing up in Palmetto Bay, 26-year-old Nick Katz might never have met his childhood best friends if it hadn’t been for skateboarding. He was a Jewish kid who lived in a nice home next to Biscayne Bay. The guys he skated with were young Jamaican dudes from West Perrine. “The…
Another day in Miami, another occasion to bitch about traffic. In Brickell, it’s so bad that even the valet parkers say their tips have been cut in half because the roads are so congested the cars can’t even get to a damn valet station. One brave Miamian has a public…
Thirteen years ago, the City of Miami designated the Dorsey Memorial Library in Overtown as a historic site. But looking at the building today, you’d never know it. The windows are boarded up. The walls are covered in graffiti. The roof is caving in. “They never did the work to…
As New Times reported last week, Carlos Gutierrez – the only candidate who has filed to run for sheriff in Collier County in the upcoming November election – was fired from Key Biscayne’s police force for repeatedly falling asleep in his cruiser in 2007. But it turns out that’s not…
In early 2007, a self-identified “disappointed but hopeful resident” of Key Biscayne typed out a letter to the police chief about something they found appalling. The resident had noticed a cop car in front of the ritzy, members-only Grand Bay Club and was happy to see the police department patrolling the…
Earlier this month, Miami Police union chief Javier Ortiz used his Facebook account to post the cell phone number of a woman who had filmed an officer speeding. He urged his followers to call her. Now, in response, a group identifying itself as part of the hacking collective Anonymous has posted Ortiz’s personal information through social media, a practice known as doxxing.
Following yesterday’s announcement that a Miami police union leader is calling for cops to boycott Beyoncé’s April show at Marlins Park, a different police union – one that represents black officers – has issued a counter-statement, essentially calling him a racist blowhard. The letter issued Friday by the Miami Community Police Benevolent…
Fifteen-year-old Federico Tamborrel was learning to drive on the Turnpike last January with his dad riding shotgun when he swerved to avoid another car. That’s when he saw what every student driver dreads most: Flashing blue-and-red lights in his mirror. But the traffic stop soon turned into a whole different…
Earlier this month, fresh off a scintillating — and controversial — Super Bowl performance, Beyoncé announced she would kick off her 2016 Formation tour in Miami at Marlins Park. Tickets sold out almost immediately. Now, the outspoken chief of Miami’s police union says his officers plan to boycott the show…
