This past July County Manager Steve Shiver rejected the nearly unanimous recommendation of a special review committee and decided that an $8.8 million computer software contract should go to a company whose lobbyist is a long-time supporter of Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas. The lobbyist, Rodney Barreto, also contributed to Shiver’s…
Rigoberto Betancourt hasn’t left Hialeah — or as he prefers saying, “Hialeah no me suelta.” (Hialeah doesn’t let go of me.) What does he mean? That a pitcher’s best moves are often in vain? That all Cuban béisbol defectors don’t end up like El Duque? It’s been more than two…
Johnny Bev is looking for one last score. Only this time he swears he’ll give some of it back to charity. In December Johnny will be 75. Last year he went into Mount Sinai for heart bypass surgery, but that doesn’t appear to have slowed him down. Today he’s dressed…
Lexus of Kendall enjoys two unique distinctions: It is the sole dealership in Miami-Dade County for the high-end, award-winning automobiles; and it currently is facing multiple charges of racial discrimination from what one attorney calls “a rainbow coalition” of former employees. In Miami allegations of workplace discrimination are hardly rare…
By late Saturday evening it was clear Hurricane Hip-Hop had been downgraded to a tropical depression at best. While the Miami Beach and county police departments had been on high alert — with war rooms set up and riot control in place — the huge, mostly black invasion, still fresh…
Miami-Dade County Public Schools has wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal funds it receives each year to feed its 365,000 mostly poor students. Gross mismanagement and cronyism have rotted the core of what once was an award-winning program — resulting in wasted food and an exodus of experienced…
My stomach rumbles but I’m not nauseous. I swallowed seasickness pills at Eckerd’s more than an hour ago and I’m sure they’ve kicked in. Last-minute nerves strike as I approach the edge of the boat. It’s just a wave of butterflies, not an all-out panic. I’m not going to break…
Cops hate “skels” (misdemeanor lowlifes), “perps” (felony lowlifes), and “short-eyes” (child-abuser pervs). But most of all they hate inside whistleblowers: other cops who go against the “thin blue line” code to turn in fellow officers — whether it’s for drinking, excessive force, or taking bribes. Bob Leuci, for example, the…
Just before midnight on Saturday, July 21, Jacira Castro sat down at her computer to check her e-mail one last time before going to bed. Up came the homepage of the Internet site she publishes. But it wasn’t her homepage. In huge type here’s what she saw: “THIS IS A…
No one is more surprised by Tom Fiedler’s appointment as the new executive editor of the Miami Herald than Tom Fiedler. The paper’s publisher, Alberto Ibargüen, first approached him in June, as Fiedler was preparing for a trip to South America. Ibargüen told Fiedler the Herald’s executive editor, Martin Baron,…
Dr. Steven Scott’s medicine show has parked its wagon outside the offices of the Miami-Dade County School Board, and it ain’t movin’ until somebody buys a health tonic. United Teachers of Dade union boss Pat Tornillo, a steely-eyed fireplug of a senior (he’s 76 years old), surveys the uneasy rabble…
In the quasi cold war that sputters back and forth across the Florida Straits (and occasionally explodes), there is often a wide gulf between words and deeds. Such is the case with the arrest in Panama nine months ago of 73-year-old Luis Posada Carriles and three Miami-Dade residents who have…
Knight Ridder was formed in 1974, when Knight Newspapers joined with Ridder Publications. The Knight company had been founded in 1903, when Charles Landon Knight, an attorney, bought the Akron Beacon Journal and made himself editor of the paper. When he died in 1933, he left the paper to his…
NW 36th Street in Miami. Action Muffler, El Patio Body Shop, an old warehouse transformed into En Espiritu y En Verdad evangelical ministry. Jackson High School stands secure behind an imposing iron fence. Across the street, protected by its own fence, Ebenezer United Methodist Church looms over all, the church’s…
Never mind her wheelchair, her bruised hip from a recent fall while doing laundry, or the 60-minute trip from her government-subsidized apartment down in Homestead — 80-odd-year-old Margaret Weedman (she insists on “21-plus and holding”) arrives fifteen minutes early for her committee meeting at the Human Services Coalition, 260 NE…
There is a species of ethnic opportunist at work in Miami-Dade County, feeding off low-income seniors in the name of altruism. It has tapped into a rich vein of public money whose main tributaries are meals and health care for the elderly. As the money comes in, it appropriates enough…
In March 2000, after a yearlong investigation, the United States Federal Election Commission (FEC) made public an eighteen-page report on its audit of the Lincoln Diaz-Balart Campaign for Congress. The audit — only the fifth in three years to target a member of Congress — covers the 1997-98 election cycle,…
It’s the last week of the legislative session, and state Rep. Carlos Lacasa’s elation is all that keeps his fatigue at bay. He leans back in his plush leather office chair and pops a chocolate into his mouth. The 37-year-old Miami Republican lawyer is about to finish his first year…
Anonymous sources have informed New Times that a new book titled Elián, recently published by educator Demetrio Perez, Jr., may actually be the work of Cuban government agents trying to discredit him. The colorful eight-by-twelve-inch, 116-page “album” is ostensibly a supplement of Libre, Perez’s weekly chronicle of Cuban-exile society and…
José F. Gonzalez spent twenty years as a cop for the Miami-Dade County Public Schools, where he rose through the ranks to become assistant chief of the 180-officer department. Until recently he was poised to be a contender for the top spot. But Gonzalez’s career as a police officer –…
At 6:00 p.m. this past April 26, NBC 6’s stern-faced anchors Jennifer Valoppi and Tony Segreto greeted viewers with a troubling report. “Almost all of us at one time have had to deal with the loss of a loved one, including making funeral arrangements. And certainly most people assume when…
At 11:00 on a Friday night, former Miami Dolphins safety, now event promoter Louis Oliver, shoulders through the side door of the Marlin Bar at Twelfth and Collins. He’s carrying a bouquet of balloons with the words “Thank You” printed on the sides. His six-foot three-inch frame is packed with…
