Robert Meyers is often asked a rather impertinent question by complete strangers: Justify your existence. “It’s the first thing people ask,” admits the executive director of Miami-Dade County’s Commission on Ethics and Public Trust www.co.miami-dade.fl.us/ethics/. “It’s hard to measure effectiveness considering what we do. We’re not arresting people. But we’re…

What do parents really know about their children? Tara Jadun’s mom thought she knew everything about her daughter — until the day she disappeared. The fourteen-year-old walked out of Nautilus Middle School in Miami Beach and simply vanished into the humid metropolis. That was four months ago, and all the…

After a long week spent fretting over possible blowback from the August 15 Ecstasy raid at Space 34, downtown Miami’s megaclub, we’re happy to report that all is well. For the throngs of moneyed club kids doing their part to transform the city’s dingy urban core, the party continues unabated…

Michael Wohl was in Las Vegas when Reuben La Brado called with the bad news. The owners of a piece of prime real estate the Miami developer wanted to buy had just voted to go with another offer. And not just any offer, but one tendered by a rival developer…

Former Miami-Dade teachers union boss Pat Tornillo is up to his python-print pajama tops in a federal investigation into his alleged misuse of union funds, including lavish spending on travel, hotels, and personal items — this despite his hefty $243,000 annual salary, a rent-free residence, and other perks generously provided…

Thirteen years ago H.T. Smith started a riot in Miami. It was a quiet riot, one fought not in the streets by burning but in boardrooms, hotels, and restaurants all around the county. Smith, backed by a handful of other black lawyers (mostly women, he notes), organized a nationwide black…

Four teenage girls sit at tables outside the Starbucks across from the University of Miami, sipping coffee and pouring out a tale of woe. The subject of the girls’ angst is Mike Thompson, a substitute teacher at Palmetto High School in Pinecrest who is, in their view, the Sen. Rick…

State legislators at the end of another bruising session in the capital are not unlike a football team coming back from an away game. They hop a plane, kick back, and relive in exaggerated detail every point won and lost. Some even think ahead to the next contest. A few…

Mayoral races in Miami are usually great political theater — drawn-out, divisive campaigns that satisfy our appetite for good old-fashioned blood sport. But, sadly, the contest for the county mayor’s job in 2004 has so far attracted a mostly lackadaisical bunch of gladiators: Nice guy comish Jimmy Morales, for example,…

Working closely with the U.S. Coast Guard, a small group of local volunteers has expanded a passive public watchdog program into an active intelligence-gathering operation. The idea may send a shudder down the official spine of the ACLU, but this handful of private citizens has turned up a number of…

Paul Novack finds himself in an odd position these days. As the veteran mayor of pint-size Surfside he’s built a reputation for being a feisty champion of the little guy, fearlessly taking on bigger, richer opponents, from Bal Harbour’s Stanley Whitman to other developers who threatened the low-rise integrity of…

Toward the end of his story, after three cups of coffee and half a pack of Marlboros, Mr. Toothpicks leans back in a vinyl Denny’s booth in Hialeah. “You know,” he exhales in a cloud of smoke, “I’m the only one who’s actually seen the whole million.” He leans forward…

Irby McKnight, unofficial mayor of Overtown, walks north along NW Third Avenue, cuts a right at Thirteenth Street, and heads over to NW Second Avenue. The deadline for the revolution looms, and he’s got hundreds of soldiers to recruit. “There’s a whole lot of discontent in this building,” McKnight says,…

The European gentleman, midforties, a slim, bespectacled fellow in a business suit, stands at the lip of the curb just outside the Royal Palm Crowne Plaza Resort in Miami Beach on a gorgeous winter afternoon. He’s just checked out of his room and asked a concierge to call him a…

It all started one balmy September evening, when four teenagers cruising back to Kendall from a night out in Coconut Grove got pulled over by a county police officer. The kids, two each in matching SUVs, were spotted by a cop swerving and looping around each other, goofing off, in…

On a recent Friday, Tony Winton and Cathy Wilson skipped lunch and headed down to the monstrous word factory on Biscayne Bay known as the Miami Herald. The two veteran Associated Press reporters took with them a stack of flyers they intended to hand to as many Herald employees as…

Thomas R. Spencer, Jr., sighs gently into the phone and tries again to explain what his group, the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO), actually does. “We’re about educating the public about what the intelligence community does and doesn’t do,” he says. Yes, I grant, but what you mainly do…

Every weekday morning for two years Becky Wyatt’s monotone voice radiated from thousands of South Florida clock radios tuned to WLRN-FM (91.3), repeating a condensed version of the local news. Twice an hour between 6:00 and 10:00 a.m. (during Morning Edition), she would read to public-radio fans stuck in rush-hour…

Coconut Grove is nearly unrecognizable as the charmingly seedy, artsy beach town it once was in the Sixties and Seventies. Back then, most of the irascible old guys who hang out at the Taurus now had just begun to walk upright, and drink beer legally — let alone bitch about…

Manny Diaz’s voice rises to a pathetic whine in the cold silence, suspended for just a moment in a side chapel meeting room at Ebenezer United Methodist Church. It’s a scratchy feminine voice with a Southern drawl — not Diaz’s usual — and it comes from the throat of Sheila…

Cheryl Little was halfway through a strategic meeting with her staff at the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center (FIAC) Tuesday afternoon, October 29, when her assistant broke in with the news: A large boatload of Haitians had run aground near Key Biscayne. People were jumping into the water, running down the…

The first stop on the McBride for Governor campaign’s early-October tour of Miami-Dade’s influential black churches is Mt. Tabor Baptist in Model City. This is legendary Congresswoman Carrie Meek’s home church, and she is here, clad in a light peach suit and clutching a tan Gucci purse, to deliver the…