Miami is effectively run by an oligopoly of useless, competing, familial political dynasties: There are the Regalados, the Hardemons, the Suarezes, the Carollos, the Diaz de la Portillas, and so on. To make a clichéd reference, Miami politics are like Game of Thrones if every player had shrapnel lodged in their brains.
Just after 8:30 last night, Miami Beach Police rushed to Española Way to find a woman who was eight months pregnant in distress. The woman told police she was having severe abdominal pain and contractions after another woman had beaten her in the stomach.
Moments before a rented Dodge Journey swerved in front of chart-topping musician XXXTentacion’s BMW outside a Riveria Beach motorcycle shop June 18 and two men pumped the 20-year-old full of bullets, surveillance cameras inside the dealership captured a short, heavyset man nicknamed “Big Rob” walking around the store.
Even in the “Gunshine State,” the National Rifle Association is rapidly becoming politically toxic. After the Parkland school massacre February 14, every politician closely aligned with the NRA took a rightful beating: Sen. Marco Rubio was ridiculed on live TV during a CNN town hall, and GOP gubernatorial candidate Adam Putnam has still not lived down calling himself a “proud NRA sellout.”
Jose Farquaharson was standing on a street corner in Overtown one night in 2015 when a car sped past him. The 42-year-old says he shouted to two Miami Police officers across the road: “Do your fucking job and stop the cars from speeding!”
North Miami Beach, a city that does not work, continues not to work. Fresh off being named New Times’ second most corrupt city in Miami-Dade County, those pesky NMB’ers have done it again: State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle’s office today announced prosecutors have charged embattled Commissioner Frantz Pierre with bribery and money laundering.
As far as international crime syndicates go, Colombia’s Oficina de Envigado is old-school: The organization was founded in the ’80s as the enforcer and debt-collection arm of Pablo Escobar’s gigantic Medellín Cartel. Run by Escobar’s accomplice Diego “Don Berna” Murillo, La Oficina handled the syndicate’s dirtiest business, including contract killing…
Barbara Carroll just wanted to cash a check for $140. The 78-year-old former probation officer and assistant bank manager, who is black, stopped by a Wells Fargo branch in Fort Lauderdale last November for what she thought would be a quick errand. Instead, she says, she spent two and a half hours…
Being a fan of South Florida sports teams is a microcosm of the city itself: The highs are extremely high, but the lows — oh, the lows — they are so low. Whether you’re a fan of the Dolphins, Panthers, Hurricanes, or Marlins, supporting each team has its major ups and downs.
When several explosions rattled the quiet neighborhood near Melreese Country Club last night, startled neighbors pulled out cell phones and began filming. They watched in shock as flames leapt dozens of feet above the pro shop at the city-owned golf course.
Late last week, a Tampa-area white man shot a black man to death and, thanks to the state’s controversial and demonstrably racist “Stand-Your-Ground” law, was not even arrested for the crime. Surveillance footage showed the victim, 28-year-old father Markeis McGlockton, shoved a man named Michael Drejka to the ground before Drejka responded…
If you get arrested anywhere in Miami-Dade County, chances are you’ll end up spending the night at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center, or TGK, near Miami International Airport. But a quick Google search for TGK will take you not to the Miami-Dade County’s official website, where you can deposit money into an inmate’s account or find visitation times, but to a nearly identical website for a bail bonds company called TGK Bail Bonds.
One of the biggest providers of mental health counselors in Florida schools, Motivational Coaches of America (MCUSA), has come under fire after an investigation by the Palm Beach Post found that some employees say they haven’t been paid and that high turnover has led to counselors abandoning children who have grown to trust them.
It’s mid-June in Lakeland, Florida, and Andrew Pollack is hunched over in a pitch-black trailer, gripping a nine-millimeter pistol with both hands, preparing to hunt a school shooter. He assumes what’s known as an isosceles stance — feet square with his shoulders, knees flexed to absorb recoil, and toes facing…
In January 2017, Carlos Gimenez became the first big-city mayor in America to capitulate to Donald Trump’s hollow Twitter threats. Miami-Dade County was not, in fact, a “sanctuary” community, he said before ordering his jails to honor Immigration and Customs Enforcement “detainer” requests. The county began holding immigrants for up to 48 hours on ICE’s behalf. The county commission even ratified Gimenez’s rule change a month later.
After a 2014 appointment at Massage Envy turned into a sexual assault, a South Florida woman filed a report with the Coral Springs Police Department. But it wasn’t until detectives began investigating that the woman learned she wasn’t the massage therapist’s first victim: According to police, Gabriel Mata had previously sexually battered another client.
Maria, an undocumented, 24-year-old mother of three from Guatemala, showed up to the Martin County Jail earlier this year to voluntarily pay a $150 traffic fine. Instead, she wound up handcuffed and thrown inside that jail. And even though she paid a $750 bond to leave the facility, Martin…
Branches of CareerSource, Florida’s job-placement service, keep getting caught inflating or inventing their job data. First, it was CareerSource Tampa Bay and CareerSource Pinellas, which were caught in February taking credit for thousands of job hires they had nothing to do with. This week, auditors caught CareerSource…
According to Facebook, Russian national Ksenia Khodukina grew up in Chelyabinsk before eventually moving to New York City and then to Trump Towers III in Sunny Isles Beach. Here, she runs a salon service called “Beauty by Ksenia” in Hallandale Beach.
In 2012, Miami Beach became one of the first cities in the nation to enact a partial ban on plastic straws. Since then, the so-called straw wars have heated up: Seattle, Malibu, Santa Barbara, and Oakland recently passed ordinances banning their use, and New York City is mulling a similar move. Meanwhile, businesses such as Starbucks and Royal Caribbean have announced plans to ditch the plastic tubes.
CareerSource is Florida’s job-placement service for the unemployed. The South Florida branch, as of 2015, was sucking up more than $70 million in state and federal funds every year to allegedly put locals to work. But the service can’t keep itself out of trouble. In 2015, New Times detailed how current CareerSource South Florida boss Rick Beasley was censured…
Accused collegiate rapist and Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Jameis Winston was suspended for only three games this year for groping an Arizona Uber driver in March 2016.
