After North Bay Village Commissioner Douglas Hornsby dramatically announced he was being blackmailed over an old cocaine charge, the town’s police chief, Carlos Noriega, quickly homed in on a trio of high-profile suspects: Mayor Connie Leon-Kreps, the wife of Commissioner Jose Alvarez, and Ana Watson, a well-connected city board member and friend of the mayor’s.
Fresh off a playoff beatdown by the Philadelphia 76ers, plenty of salty Miami Heat fans laughed their way through a report in the Ringer this morning that exploded a tactical weapon wielded by Philly’s front office. The story documents how the Sixers’ president of basketball operations, Bryan Colangelo, has almost certainly kept at least five secret Twitter accounts. On them, he has bashed his team’s biggest stars, divulged secret medical information, and, most important, fiercely defended the weirdly gigantic collars he wears.
After another year of fear-mongering news reports and an overwhelming police presence at Memorial Day festivities in South Beach, the worst gun-related incident of the weekend came after a false rumor of gunfire. A brief panic erupted around 8:15 last night near Ocean Drive, sparking a minor stampede that left one person injured.
Six days before hurricane season even begins, we already have our first named storm of the year. And it will absolutely drench South Florida just in time for a three-day weekend. Subtropical Storm Alberto officially formed around 10 a.m. just off the Yucatán Peninsula in the northwestern Caribbean Sea, which means the system has picked up a noticeable rotation and kicked up winds topping 39 mph.
Early this morning, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School survivors and #NeverAgain activists gathered in the dark parking lot of a Coral Springs Publix and began tracing bodies on the asphalt in chalk. When they were finished well before dawn, they’d drawn the outlines of 17 victims and an ominous twist on Publix’s famous slogan: “Where shooting is a pleasure.”
There’s already plenty of depression to go around in South Florida before this Memorial Day. Traffic is gonna be a ludicrous nightmare thanks to Miami Beach’s totally not-race-related crackdown on Urban Beach Week. The Marlins belong in the trash can, and the Dolphins will probably be even worse. And now, a tropical depression might just roll over the peninsula for the holiday weekend.
Logging into Twitter first thing in the morning in 2018 generally feels like diving headfirst into a flaming dumpster floating down a flooded roadway. Wage theft is legal now! Trump is treating the Constitution like a Russian prostitute! More than a week before hurricane season begins, a damn tropical storm might already be forming!
When Pete Fernandez returns to South Florida to hunt down the missing son of a rising politician — and eventually to unravel a cold case tied to a murderous cult — he operates in a very real version of Miami. The fictional detective hangs in Wynwood, eats Cuban food at Islas Canarias, and pokes around cookie-cutter suburbs in Southwest Miami-Dade.
It was well after midnight inside the posh lounge of the Trump National Doral Miami when a man unfurled a large American flag, pulled out a gun, and started yelling about President Donald Trump. When he began firing, the resort staff called 911. When the cops arrived, the man started shooting at them…
Formula One racing is already cruising a fast track to bring a high-octane Grand Prix to downtown Miami by 2019. The city commission voted last week to begin negotiating with the international race organization to hash out the details. Now Miami-Dade County will weigh in on the idea, which has drawn opposition…
If Miami is in a bad mood this morning, it’s understandable. This weekend was the rare two-day stretch of relentless gray clouds, driving rain, and flash floods with barely a second of sunshine. Now the city has woken up to a gloomy Monday of booming thunder and even more rain.
Just as the Miami City Commission was wrapping up a marathon meeting last night, Commissioner Joe Carollo turned to Commissioner Ken Russell and began chuckling.
In January, Miami-Dade prosecutors charged 42-year-old Ana Watson with four felonies for allegedly stealing thousands from the North Bay Village condo board where she served as treasurer. The charges came after months of work by Det. Tom Columbano, a 30-year veteran who pieced together the alleged scheme to pass off photoshopped checks.
Since the Parkland massacre, the Sun Sentinel’s journalists have done exemplary work detailing the failures of Broward Sheriff’s Office deputies in responding to the mass shooting and covering the national gun control movement sparked by Stoneman Douglas survivors and parents of the victims. Yet amid all of that stellar journalism, the paper’s advertising staff continued taking money from gun sellers.
Downtown Miami residents are known as tolerant people who understand that in exchange for world-class views and easy access to the city’s vibrant heart, they must live with a certain level of noise and chaos. Just kidding! Actually, the wealthy owners of bayfront condos have spent the past several years fighting to shut down nightclubs and shutter festivals to bring quiet to their neighborhood.
Last month, Tampa-based strip club pioneer Joe Redner successfully sued the state for the right to grow his own medical marijuana. Now Redner is going after the state to undo its hilariously restrictive licensing rules, which have allowed only a handful of politically connected companies into the game.
Al Crespo has never been shy about his past. Before he became a pugnacious blogger, he robbed banks and served years in prison. So when Crespo watched Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo publicly shame a city employee last night over an old arrest record, he became so irate he hopped into his car and sped to Dinner Key to lambaste Carollo in front of the commission.
When former Miami Beach Police Chief Carlos Noriega was hired to run the cop shop in North Bay Village in 2015, he set out to hire a trusted veteran without local ties to head the internal affairs department. That person would also tackle sensitive political cases if they arose. Noriega chose Sam Bejar, a retired MBPD vet with decades of experience.
For 26 years, Gustavo Falcon lived the mundane life of a middle-aged suburban-Orlando dad. He jogged, he worked an ordinary job, and — unbeknownst to all of his new friends and neighbors — he kept one eye over his shoulder for the federal agents he knew one day would catch up to him.
While fellow passengers record on their cell phones, a young man with a waxed mustache struggles with three Miami-Dade Police officers on an American Airlines plane sitting on the tarmac at Miami International Airport.
Few pockets of Miami-Dade are more hellishly clogged with hair-rending traffic than West Kendall. So passions ran hot when Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez held a town hall there yesterday. Fresh off a trip to China, where Gimenez cooled on his dreams of a new high-tech bus system, the county mayor was…
From early Reefer Madness panic to the ’70s hippie weed cult that took over Star Island to the glory days of ’80s smuggling in Everglades City, Florida has a long, deep, and complex relationship with marijuana — as New Times explores in this week’s cover story. Though Florida has finally legalized medical pot, full-blown, Colorado-style recreational dope still feels a long way away in the Sunshine State.
