Just over a year ago, Miami Beach Police Chief Dan Oates banned his officers from all off-duty work at SoBe nightclubs after a string of embarrassments, including a sergeant who got wasted while working at Mango’s Tropical Cafe. Today, Beach cops are not only back on the job — they’re…
As any veteran Miamian will quickly remind you, November is still very much part of hurricane season. Still, by now South Florida is usually starting to bask in regular 70-degree highs and calm seas. But not this year. As a record-shattering heat wave cooks Florida for a second straight week,…
Yesterday, Teresa Sarnoff ended a runoff with city commission opponent Ken Russell in the most dramatic way possible, by abruptly dropping a letter withdrawing from the race and blasting the dirty politics she says have dominated local elections. But is the race actually over? Russell certainly doesn’t think so. His…
Sea level rise shouldn’t be a controversial subject in a state subcommittee tasked with talking about Everglades restoration and water management. That’s exactly why two state representatives from South Florida began asking a Tallahassee bureaucrat earlier this week about climate change’s impact on the state’s projects. But this is Florida,…
How bad can Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign get? The one-time frontrunner has spent this week trotting out a hashtag as custom-made for Internet mockery as “Hotline Bling” and putting all his hopes in a new book about how awesome he was at email in the early ’00s. Voters have just about…
There are a few non-negotiable rules of doing big business in Miami. Speak at least a little Spanish. Learn to enjoy cigars. Never speak ill of the Estefans. And — this one is important — do not, under any circumstances, reveal your admiration for Fidel Castro or Che Guevara. Marcelo…
As King Tides rose in Miami Beach this week, brackish water spilled over sidewalks and drowned docks. There were at least two low-lying spots that stayed remarkably dry, though — the shopping plaza at Sunset Harbor, and the area near 10th and Alton. Both were saved by Miami Beach’s multi-million…
Jeb Bush helped created Marco Rubio. He cheered him through his early victories in tiny West Miami. He even gave him a damned golden sword on the floor of the Florida House while blessing him as a “great conservative warrior.” And last night in front of a national TV audience,…
Miami Beach voters are no strangers to shady election scuffles, but one commission race has now entered only-in-Florida bizarre territory, with one candidate sending out hundreds of mailers about charges that his opponent had battered a security guard — but neglecting to redact his Social Security Number from the police…
Saturday’s University of Miami loss to Clemson was costly. The 58-0 annihilation cost fans another season of false hope. It cost players their remaining shreds of dignity. And in the long run, it’s probably going to cost the University of Miami many millions of dollars. To loud cheers from pundits,…
If there’s one place in America where the “build a stadium and the money will come” lie shouldn’t fly, it’s Miami. We’ve already suffered third degree burns from that tale tale. It’s exactly what politicians promised would happen in Little Havana as they crafted the worst deal in history to build…
When he was 18 years old, Stanley Victor Campbell moved from New York to Miami. Over the next seven decades, he would become an institution in the city, noted for his work in public schools and later in Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. Along the way, he also had five sons —…
Hundreds of zombies ran screaming through downtown Fort Myers late on Saturday night, fleeing in terror as gunshots rang out in the night. When police forced their way through the panicked costumed crowd, they found six attendees at that night’s packed “ZombiCon” bleeding in the street. One may, wearing a…
Richard Rodriguez’s heart thumped as walked into his ten-year high school reunion at Belen Jesuit Preparatory School, the famed all-boys academy in Pinecrest that boasts graduates from Fidel Castro to Perez Hilton. But the Cuban-American with short-cropped black hair and a wide smile wasn’t worried about how his job or physique…
The call came to Miami-Dade Police just before 2 a.m. last night: A robber with a bandana pulled over his face and a silver handgun had just hit a Walgreens in South Dade and sped off in a white SUV. Minutes later, after a high-speed chase down Dixie Highway, police…
Unless you’re a GOP presidential candidate, you’ve probably accepted the facts by now: The global climate is changing. The seas are rising. And at some point, low-lying Miami-Dade County is going to do the whole Atlantis thing. The latest evidence came yesterday, with a new study that found that even…
Eugene Ramirez is a star graduate of Belen Jesuit Preparatory School, the elite Miami high school that claims Fidel Castro among its alumni. Ramirez is also openly gay. That fact apparently didn’t bother the school when it asked Ramirez — a TV journalist who moved to Tampa earlier this year…
A red BWM convertible with the top down rolled alongside a yellow taxi cab on Pine Tree Drive early this morning, past the million-dollar Miami Beach mansions and the gnarled old trees that give the road its name. Suddenly, gunfire raked the side of the taxi as the convertible squealed…
It’s no secret many Florida police are uneasy about a bill that advanced in Tallahassee yesterday to allow residents to openly carry firearms. In fact, the only reason the Sunshine State is still one of six states to prohibit open gun-toting is because the state Sheriff’s Association has vigorously opposed…
Rebecca Towers are a relic of another South Beach: A senior housing complex in the heart of multi-million waterfront condos. That’s also made the towers a regular target for conspiracy theorists on the beach for a simple reason: The land the government-run subsidized housing sits on is worth millions amidst…
Between Stand Your Ground and the weekly insane crime news, Florida is about as close to the Wild West as it gets in today’s America. So it’s genuinely a surprise that the Sunshine State is somehow one of six states that still prohibit the public from carrying around weapons in…
Last October, Miami New Times broke the news that at least two Miami Police Department cops had been clients at the notorious Coral Gables steroid den Biogenesis. Hours after that story was published, MPD brass announced they’d soon begin testing their cops for anabolic steroid abuse because of “rage-like” problems…
