At 7:30 last night, Bunche Park was humming with activity — pickup basketball games scuffling on the asphalt, young football players running drills, and moms and dads enjoying the cool November weather. Then a black Chevy Impala slowly drove past and rained at least a dozen bullets on the crowd,…
According to some cops right here in South Florida, the simple act of pointing a camera at a police officer on the job is a crime. Here’s the absurd theory: In Florida, it’s illegal to record someone without consent; therefore, filming a cop without his permission is a crime.Never mind…
Next time someone argues that justice is the end result after a trip through American courts, here’s the only rebuttal you need: “Liberty City Seven.” The informants were money-extorting, wife-beating lowlifes. Bush-era, terrorism-obsessed cronies hyped it. And after two straight juries deadlocked on whether seven poor dudes in Liberty City…
The Occupy movement started with mass outrage against Wall Street, and while Miami may not be home to the slimy realm of Gordon Gekko, protesters outside the Stephen P. Clark Government Center are turning their economic outrage onto the local equivalent: the downtown Bank of America headquarters.Around 10 a.m. this…
Hey, it’s your favorite morning of the year! The one where you stumble out of bed to realize you spent the night next to a stranger dressed like Muammar Gaddafi (too soon?), scrape the caked zombie makeup off your face and stumble to work through a grade-five hangover. But then…
How often does one grainy police video end up capturing the best and worst of local cops? One on side, there’s Fausto Lopez — a 35-year-old Miami police officer whose name immediately joins the bad cop pantheon of Adam Tavss, Derick Kuilan and Lavont Flanders after he led a Florida…
Last Friday, Miami International Airport officers inspecting the bags of a 17-year-old British girl headed back to London took a look at a couple dozen boxes of cake mix stuffed amid her clothes. They weren’t full of red velvet batter. The cops found 30 pounds of cocaine inside, and the…
Kit Curtin tracks manatees in Miami
Erislandy Lara: Robbed in a boxing scandal, he’s coming back
There’s nothing quite like the impending invasion of Arkansas’s finest low-rent retailer to inspire fiery emotions in an up-and-coming neighborhood. (How many other chains have sparked angry documentaries and legions of dissenting groups?)Ever since Riptide broke the news yesterday that Sam Walton’s brainchild is planning a huge new outpost in…
PETA, everyone’s favorite group of totally rational animal activists, has launched a new legal attack against SeaWorld this morning, accusing parks in Orlando and California of mistreating five killer whales. Which, actually, OK! There are lots of reasonable arguments against keeping orcas in captivity.PETA’s argument, however, is that the killer…
If an Ohio-based developer has its way, newly flourishing midtown Miami’s newest tenant will be a 160,000-square-foot Walmart. The behemoth discount center would cover the five-acre spot just south of Petsmart on North Miami Avenue and would become the first Walmart inside Miami’s city limits.But that’s assuming Miami’s political establishment…
The gritty rooftop “Miami Kiwanis Club League” might be every bit as much a fantasy as the idea of seeing The Heatles destroy the NBA again before Christmastime — but damn if it doesn’t look like a hell of a fun game.Dwyane Wade dominates for a “Little Havana” team in…
In a murky, garbage-strewn canal next to a dilapidated apartment complex, a mossy-colored beast breaks the water’s surface. The manatee looks as out of place in this hood as a three-piece-suit-clad banker chillin’ at Churchill’s.Kit Curtin, a veteran biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, says it ain’t easy being a…
For 26 years, taxpayers have poured hundreds of millions into Doral-based TV and Radio Marti to beam American news into Cuba with the idea that keeping Havana abreast of Florida Marlins’ scores will inspire Cubanos to rise up against the Castros. But Fidel is far too wily for that –…
For hundreds of students at Jay Elementary, this week’s fundraiser will go down in history as simply the greatest ever. In exchange for raising money for the Panhandle school, students received some cheap-o slap bracelets — which, when torn apart, revealed pictures of nude women in pornographic poses.School officials are…
Occupy Miami protests for something
Wondering if you’ve hit absolute rock bottom yet? Well, have you mugged your pregnant ex-girlfriend for a couple hundred bucks, laid low in the woods for a few hours and then gotten caught by police hiding next to a bait shack behind someplace called “Hobo’s Restaurant”?No? In that case, Ryan Pettit,…
Just ask those French malcontents belting out “La Marseillaise” after they stormed the Bastille — it ain’t a real revolution until you’ve got good song to rally the masses.Enter local rapper La Guardia, who picked up a mic a few weeks back after catching video of the Occupy Wall Street…
Echoing the ongoing “Occupy” movements from Wall Street to San Francisco, hundreds of sign-waving, drum-beating, flyer-hawking protesters gathered in Bayfront Park this afternoon, drawing supportive honks from cars pouring down Biscayne Boulevard and bewildered stares from tourists popping shrimp at Bubba Gump.The energy around the Torch of Friendship was palpable,…
In the end, the police found SpongeBob SquarePants not in a pineapple under the sea, but hunkered down in an apartment complex off the Turnpike with three of his convenience store robbing cohorts.Last night, Orlando cops finally closed in on the four men they say have been terrorizing Central Florida…
Rick Perry’s Niggerhead: Florida locales have racially insensitive names too
