The history of Florida is the adjustment to intrusion. In the state’s short 172-year history, armed U.S. troops have chased native Seminoles out of the Everglades, pristine beaches once considered worthless land have become vacation hot spots, and cattle pastures have given way to Disney World food courts.
South Florida has the largest number of doctors approved to recommend medical marijuana to patients.
Ignore the fact that the FBI has probed the City of North Miami Beach’s proposal to hand the operation of its entire water system over to a private company, and brush aside that the third-ranked company bidding for the project, the French firm Veolia, has ties to lead crises in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Flint, Michigan.
Federal and state authorities probed North Miami Beach’s pending deal to potentially privatize its water system, North Miami Beach City Attorney Jose Smith said Thursday. “They found no wrongdoing,” he added.
Miami Beach has collected only about 2 percent of the short-term-rental fines it has handed out.
If you’re a sentient human in Miami, you know by now that trying to walk or ride your bike around town can be downright scary. Last year, 1,508 pedestrians lost their lives on South Florida roads — the third highest death toll in the nation, trailing only the New York and Los Angeles metro areas.
In 2014, Miami-Dade County Police abandoned a technology called ShotSpotter, which detects gunshots using microphones, after the department claimed the technology didn’t work. Then, last September, MDPD decided to spend up to $5 million on ShotSpotter a second time, without mentioning that the technology failed the first time.
South Beach appears to be coming apart at the seams this month. Sure, spring break is nuts every year in Miami Beach, but 2017 was supposed to be different: Police have instituted liquor bans on the beach and even rolled out license-plate readers to try to track down alleged criminals who have entered the city.
It’s been almost three years since LeBron James last bounced a basketball for the Heat, but constant reminders remain of his four-season tour in Miami. No, we’re not talking about your dad and his Tourette’s-like stream of profanity that flares up every time he sees LeBron on TV. We’re talking about the No. 6 Heat jerseys that still litter the South Florida landscape.
Having a hand in catastrophic lead crises in multiple American cities should probably disqualify a company from ever controlling a public water utility. But that has not stopped North Miami Beach from negotiating to potentially hand its water services over to Veolia, a private company tied to the two largest drinking-water crises in America: the catastrophes in Flint, Michigan; and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
In June 2016, the City of Miami Beach voted to eventually raise its minimum wage to $13.31 per hour. The move sounds innocuous enough, but it was a shot across the bow of state legislators: Florida law actually bans local municipalities from setting their own wages higher than the state’s…
Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle, Miami’s top prosecutor, hasn’t been the subject of much public outrage during her 24 years in office. Despite wielding a huge power over Miami’s criminal justice system, she’s largely flown below the radar since she took over for Janet Reno in 1993, despite having…
Miami-Dade commissioners — particularly Barbara Jordan and Audrey Edmonson — last week let down their constituents. How? They punted for a third straight year on coming up with a system to give $14 million in funding to nonprofit groups.
The three kids heard something in the night but figured mom was just arguing with her boyfriend Carlos. So they went back to sleep. Friday morning, 8-year-old Noah got up for school and awoke his siblings, 4-year-old Martha and 3-year-old Michael. Mom and Carlos still hadn’t stirred, so he walked…
According to a June 2012 police report, Civilian Investigative Panel member Danny Suarez ran into Miami Police Union President Javier Ortiz outside the Sugar Nightclub, threatened to get Ortiz fired, obstructed a traffic stop, and — when Ortiz attempted to arrest him — ran away from the scene of the…
Climate change is already making life more difficult in South Florida, and the signs remain ever more ominous that it will get worse. Just this week, scientists found that the Gulf of Mexico is freakishly hot for the tail end of winter — which could fuel monster hurricanes…
The Miami Dolphins should be the team that makes a phone call to Kaepernick. They should sign him and make him their backup quarterback. The decision really shouldn’t even be all that difficult.
In 2010, Miami-Dade County Police became the first law enforcement department in the nation to buy a drone. The $50,000, military-grade flying robot was paid for with a U.S. Department of Justice grant. But although buying an expensive drone is easy enough, figuring out how to legally fly what is basically a garbage can full of privacy-invading cameras is hard to do. So MDPD’s drone has sat virtually unused since 2011.
City of Miami Police Lt. Javier Ortiz was temporarily suspended this week. He was stripped of his gun and will be forced to fill out paperwork for the foreseeable future, thanks to a restraining order a county judge granted against him by a woman he’d harassed on Facebook. Ortiz runs…
Miami Police Lt. Javier Ortiz, the outspoken head of the city’s cop union, has been temporarily reassigned to desk duty and stripped of his gun, New Times has confirmed. The move came after a judge granted a restraining order to a woman Ortiz allegedly harassed and doxxed online.
Miami Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart definitely, totally, absolutely hasn’t been trying to trade his vote for “Trumpcare” for control over the Trump administration’s Cuba policy, the congressman’s spokesperson tells New Times. Just minutes before the scheduled high-stakes vote, such is the surreal world of political intrigue in which Diaz-Balart now finds himself.
Before voting to ban floating billboards in his city, Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine told the company behind the concept that it was an “interesting business.” He must have meant it: A month and a half later, he’s now using their services to advertise.
