Some doctors call them “super bugs,” bacteria that have grown so resistant to antibiotics they can withstand all but the most powerful and expensive drugs. Untreated, they can cause serious illness such as pneumonia and bone disease, even death. Three weeks ago I wrote about one of these super bugs…

This past Tuesday, June 22, Miami-Dade County Manager George Burgess announced his selection of a new director for the Corrections and Rehabilitation Department: Charles McRay, a 27-year department veteran. “While we hit a little bump in the road,” he told county commissioners, “I make this recommendation with total confidence.” Some…

David Collins is not an imposing man. He’s a baby-faced 37 years old, about five feet, five inches tall, heavyset, with thinning hair. He has a habit of talking fast and crass, which makes him seem nervous or gives him a hustler’s air — depending on the subject. But lack…

A highly contagious and antibiotic-resistant strain of staph infection has contaminated a Miami-Dade County jail, causing open, seeping sores in some inmates that could potentially spread to anyone they come into contact with including corrections officers, visitors, lawyers, and judges. Corrections medical officials have misdiagnosed the ailment, been slow to…

Hooligan’s Pub owner Jay Love touts himself as a common-sense alternative to the career politicians and slick elites populating the pack in the upcoming Miami-Dade mayoral election. He’s self-made, an entrepreneur, he loves children! And as Love is the only Anglo in the race, his influence cannot be easily dismissed…

This past February the rebellion in Haiti gripped the world. Journalists from Spain, England, and Japan, not to mention a battalion of American media might — the New York Times, CNN, the Washington Post, NPR, and more — camped out at swank Port-au-Prince hotels like the Montana, El Rancho, and…

The Miami-Dade Police Department’s Animal Services unit is getting a lot of attention lately, none of it good. On March 18, New Times published a story about a woman who was taken to the hospital with heart trouble. After the ambulance carted her away, someone called Animal Services, which confiscated…

Capt. Edwin Milian-Zabala is a hard-working member of the Miami-Dade Park and Recreation Department’s security unit. Didn’t know such a thing existed? You’re not alone. But that doesn’t mean the unit’s employees don’t work hard. In fact Milian-Zabala appears to toil endlessly on behalf of county taxpayers. He put in…

In the sweltering hilltop town of Petionville, about ten miles above the congestion and cacophony of Port-au-Prince, people gathered on the morning of March 7. Under the watchful eyes of U.S. Marines and French troops in armored vehicles, men and women wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the Haitian flag and carrying…

The vodou appears to have worked. In Gonaives, a port town in northern Haiti where the armed insurrection began that ultimately forced President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from power, an ash mound in front of the grave of Amiot Metayer is a charred reminder of an angry people. It is the remnants…

The Miami Herald set off fireworks with its March 9 article headlined “Police secretly watching hip-hop artists,” in which the paper alleged Miami Beach and Miami police were “secretly watching and keeping dossiers on hip-hop celebrities” and have “photographed rappers as they arrived at Miami International Airport.” Written by Nicole…

Last week, at the University of Miami’s Gusman Auditorium, Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas gave his final State of the County address. In this optimistic political libretto he hit all the high notes, mentioning the county’s fiscal health and burgeoning cultural scene, evidenced by the Latin Grammy Awards here last year…

In 1818 the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley published “Ozymandias of Egypt,” which describes how a traveler in the desert stumbles upon the enormous, broken statue of a great king. “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone” stand next to a “shatter’d visage,” Shelley writes. “And on the pedestal these…

The only space big enough to hold the crowd gathered at the e-Equality technology center on Biscayne Boulevard last week was the cavernous classroom in the back, where people sat amid rows of beige PCs glowing dully in the fluorescent light. And even though the topic was serious, grim even,…

Last month the Public Health Trust released an internal audit disclosing that it was stiffed $25 million by nonresident patients — the majority of whom the hospital should not have admitted according to its own rules. Many were foreign nationals arriving for elective surgery who either didn’t have insurance or…

Miami’s war on public corruption has spawned a private skirmish affecting two top law-enforcement agencies. Marcos Jimenez, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, has accused the Miami-Dade Police Department of leaking information about a sensitive investigation, an accusation police officials vehemently deny. In response Miami-Dade Police Director Carlos…

It’s been nearly two years since ex-Miami-Dade Commissioner Miriam Alonso was arrested by police, which prompted Gov. Jeb Bush to boot her from office amid a cloud of scandal. And yet the intervening 21 months have not resulted in a trial date for the former powerhouse politician and her husband,…

Have you noticed that our brash new police chief has been getting more and more surly as complaints over his handling of the Free Trade Area of the Americas protests refuse to go away? A couple of weeks ago he nearly bit off the head of Citizens Investigative Panel vice…

Earlier this year we learned how Miami-Dade’s taxpayer-funded Public Health Trust incurred a $2.6 million loss after breaking its own rules. An uninsured patient from Guatemala was admitted for treatment at Jackson Memorial Hospital’s well-regarded burn center. He subsequently died and the bill for his treatment was never paid. Ira…

The first-round bell has rung in the contest to define what happened at the FTAA protests two weeks ago. In one corner is officialdom, where Miami Mayor Manny Diaz praises police for showing restraint; the editorial page of the boosterish Miami Herald proclaims “the police, well prepared and out in…

From the moment they fired the first concussion grenade, it was clear that police controlled the streets during last week’s FTAA protests. Phalanxes of armored cops bristled with weaponry. Armored vehicles prowled streets and blocked intersections. Downtown was turned into a confusing labyrinth of dead ends and detours. Authorities transformed…

The North American Free Trade Agreement among the U.S., Canada, and Mexico is nearly a decade old, long enough for its record to be examined by those who see it as a harbinger of what the much larger Free Trade Area of the Americas might bring. Predictably there is wide…