This past March, Robert Blake, the University of Miami Medical School’s general counsel, chastised Michael Kosnitzky, who sits on the board of the Public Health Trust. Kosnitzky was just asking too many damned questions about how UM was going to spend the roughly $65 million the PHT pays it to…

Miami Beach City Hall never looked so good. Lots of hair gel, sleeveless T-shirts and exposed bellybuttons, everything but the velvet rope. And despite the heavy cloud cover and rain, no one forgot their sunglasses. This, of course, was at the big club industry protest last week. Nightclub owners, promoters,…

The dismissal of six workers from a local office of the Department of Children and Families is one of the most surreal governmental dramas to play itself out in some time. Certainly you recall the incident. On March 4 an aide to state Sen. Rudy Garcia was accompanying the senator’s…

About a month ago Lois Spears, director of Miami-Dade’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, picked up the phone. She must have gritted her teeth when she punched the numbers to the Miami-Dade Police Department. No one in a position of power, especially in law enforcement, is fond of asking for…

Three weeks ago some 5000 people marched down Calle Ocho to protest Fidel Castro’s crackdown on dissidents, in which about 80 people who’d been peacefully seeking democratic reforms were jailed. The ritual was familiar: repression in Cuba, protests here. So was the outcome: another empty gesture. Far from being chastened…

City of Miami Fire Department Capt. Ed Pidermann, president of Miami’s chapter of the International Association of Firefighters (Local 587), shares such a strong bond with his fellow firefighters he is inclined to forgive them for just about anything. And for that, Keith Beckler can breathe a sigh of relief…

Although I had seen Lt. Israel Gonzalez around the Miami Police Department, it wasn’t until a meeting in a deserted office building just before midnight two years ago that I got to know him. I hoped he could verify a story I’d heard — that a police major quashed a…

From his law office on the 28th floor of a downtown high-rise, Michael Kosnitzky, cigar clenched in one hand, is poring over last year’s Annual Operating Agreement between the Public Health Trust (PHT) and University of Miami. The county-run PHT gave UM’s School of Medicine approximately $70 million in taxpayer…

Bill Hames walked into Judge Alan Gold’s federal courtroom on January 28 and all heads turned. Many did a double take. Hames seemed so … frail. He’s a slender five-eight, his face taut, hair gray gone white. Twice during his testimony the jury asked him to speak up because his…

The most noticeable thing about Francisco Ferreras is his chest. He is otherwise an imposing presence — tall, muscular arms, broad back, shaved head bronzed by the sun. But it is the chest that impresses. It is prodigiously expansive, but not in the way bodybuilders become musclebound with bulk. Ferreras’s…

This is a distressing time for Camilo Padreda. It’s the end of an era. Possibly his. The self-proclaimed best friend of the Miami Police Department is mourning the recent departure of Chief Raul Martinez. Padreda has known Martinez for nearly three decades and could count on the chief to open…

Dr. Stanley Feinman is chuckling into the phone. “Sure, come on over,” he says. “Make sure your laugh meter is on. I mean, I know this is serious stuff, but thank God I’ve got a distorted sense of humor.” It is just that kind of unrepentant attitude that has put…

The sun beams overhead and an azure Atlantic is just visible through a verdant screen of palm trees and bougainvillea bushes to the west. Lush topiary covers the east side of Ocean Boulevard as well, shrouding gated spreads that line the avenue like new wedding cakes. On days like this…

After a brutal year, Miami Police Chief Raul Martinez announced his resignation last week. He’ll leave on New Year’s Day. And while the announcement caught many off-guard, including the mayor, it was not unexpected. His decision had been in the works for a while, and the consequence of not resigning…

It’s not clear what propelled Gregory Poyser to seek a career in law enforcement. Maybe he had a strong desire to help others. Maybe he wanted to strap on a gun and be near the action. And maybe, just maybe, he had an unconscious desire to turn himself in. By…

On August 6, at 2:12 p.m., a fire broke out in the Special Management Unit (SMU) South of the MetroWest Detention Center, one of the county’s jails located in the marshy swamplands of west Miami-Dade. The SMU is an extra-secure wing in the jail that holds security-risk inmates: They may…

Jorge Mursuli has carved out a career in Miami as a tireless defender of personal freedoms and free speech. He is the former director of SAVE Dade, a gay-rights group; a board member of the Miami-Dade County Community Relations Board; and the current director of the civil rights group People…

Charts Miami Neighborhood Map Lawsuits Galore The Miami Index Miami’s Brain Matter Yes, Miami is a trash-strewn city of desperate extremes, plagued by inadequate educational opportunities, job prospects, and public services. It’s a city fragmented by racism, corruption, and apathy. But Miami is also a city of endless reinvention, a…

Charts Miami Neighborhood Map Are You Poor? Do the Math Miami Portrait Top-Ten Poorest Cities Poverty Quiz Good Surveys Make Good Neighbors Compare & Contrast American Cities Many Miami neighborhoods more closely resemble the outskirts of a poverty-stricken Latin capital than a major American city. In Wynwood and Allapattah and…

The Miami Police Department gobbles up nearly half the city’s budget, about $150 million annually. Inadequate supervision inside the department squanders much of that taxpayer money, as underscored by a series of audits conducted by Miami’s Office of Internal Audits, which tracks the flow of money into and out of…

On Monday morning, August 27, 2001, Miami Police Chief Raul Martinez greeted three visitors: retired FBI agent Virgil Young from Tennessee, Austin Police Department Commander Robert Gross from Texas, and Albuquerque PD Lt. Steve Nix of New Mexico. If the chief wasn’t nervous, he should have been. These men held…

It’s hard to churn the waters over which the pencil-thin island city of Miami Beach glimmers. While its big sister across the causeway burns with big-city issues — police brutality, fiscal ruin, election fraud — the weightiest concern on the Beach, especially during the summer doldrums, are the bumps in…