Pedro Rene Gonzalez had been sitting in Miami’s Federal Detention Center (FDC Miami) awaiting trial on weapons charges since December 18, 2018. Despite languishing in jail for eight months, Gonzalez never made it to trial: The federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) today confirmed to New Times…
The University of Miami — allegedly an upstanding institution that’s supposed to teach students right from wrong — is refusing to voluntarily hand Miami’s police-oversight board some payroll documents tied to the single most controversial cop in town: perennial troublemaker and Miami Police Capt. Javier Ortiz.
Friday afternoon, a simulated jail cell was placed on the University of Miami’s campus to raise awareness about the lack of air conditioning and ventilation in Florida’s state prisons.
Washington state resident Eric Lin was not shy about his love for Adolf Hitler. According to a criminal complaint filed Friday, Lin enjoyed referencing the Third Reich in writing: He apparently sent a litany of Hitler-referencing death threats to a Hispanic woman in Miami and got himself arrested last week…
There won’t be any movies made about the multimillion-dollar scam sold by Boca Raton resident Scott Strochak. No Leonardo DiCaprio depictions, no adaptions by Martin Scorsese, and no big-money Netflix deal. In truth, Strochak’s alleged scheme amounts to small potatoes when it comes to ill-gotten riches in South Florida, and even smaller in the larger world of financial chicanery. Still, $3.8 million is nothing to balk at.
Payday lenders are already some of the worst people on Planet Earth. They lend money to the poor and desperate at loan-shark-level interest rates and essentially trap people in debt for ungodly long periods of time. The industry also donates heavily to Donald Trump’s campaigns.
Last night, state Rep. Shevrin Jones had wrapped up a legislative update for his constituents in Miami Gardens when he heard an alarming pop-pop-pop. Jones and a couple of his staffers had been talking to residents outside the meeting room at Miami Carol City Park. He barely registered the flashing light of gunfire before a youth football team that had been practicing made a mad dash off the field. Everyone ran into the building to take cover.
Protecting your private data in 2019 is a struggle, to say the least. Even something as innocuous as an app that makes your face look old might secretly store all of your photos and create a database of faces in a Russian basement somewhere.
State Attorney Mike Satz has been the top prosecutor in Broward County since 1976. He’s somehow won every single reelection bid, every four years, for the past 43 years. In that time, the criminal-justice world has changed around him.
Federal agents used limited parking outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office in Miramar as a pretext to racially profile drivers earlier today, activists say.
City Girls are one of 2019’s breakout hip-hop acts. After they were featured on Drake’s recent hit “In My Feelings,” the group’s subsequent singles — “Twerk,” featuring Cardi B, and “Act Up” — have essentially become the biggest songs of the year not named “Old Town Road.”
Cesar Sayoc, the pro-Trump Miami resident who briefly terrorized the nation by sending a series of mail bombs to prominent Democrats last year, was sentenced to 20 years in prison today in Manhattan federal court, according to multiple news outlets.
The last time Miami Beach Crime Prevention and Awareness made the news, then-Police Chief Daniel Oates was distancing himself from the controversial vigilante group and vaguely claiming its new leader had put cops in danger and kicked many police officers out of its Facebook group.
As we tore into a maze of streets outside San Juan, Agent Victor O. Acevedo pulled a firearm from his belt and placed it on his lap as he looked for any threats that might surface. Acevedo, an enthusiastic eight-year veteran of Puerto Rico’s narcotics department, had agreed to let me ride along with him one day to see a raid in action.
In what has become a recurring theme over the past few years, the Miami Police Department is, once again, struggling with theft and missing property. According to internal documents obtained by New Times, the department recently warned its officers about valuables left inside their cruisers, because four were burgled between July 6 and 24.
Rumors have swirled for weeks that the Homestead Temporary Shelter for Unaccompanied Children, the single largest detention center for migrant kids in America, may be closing its doors permanently. Mere months ago, the facility held roughly 3,000 children, but in recent weeks, the facility has rapidly slashed its population.
K.T.’s trip aboard a Royal Caribbean cruise in 2015 was supposed to have been a celebration. She was traveling with her two sisters and grandparents. It was the day after Christmas. When she stepped aboard the Oasis of the Seas to begin a seven-day cruise December 26, she was just 15 years old.
In 2017, James Merrill of Massachusetts was sentenced to six years in prison for his role in a massive pyramid scheme that fleeced roughly 1.8 million people out of more than $3 billion. Merrill and his partner, Carlos Wanzeler, made off like bandits with millions in illegitimate gains they dumped into 21 South Florida properties.
Melissa Lopez and her boyfriend were at a Miami Art Week event in December 2017 when she stopped to check her phone for details about the next event they wanted to attend. When she looked up, a Miami cop was hauling away her boyfriend.
Miami is dealing with another round of political death threats. Last year, Miamian Cesar Sayoc infamously sent pipe bombs to a host of Democratic activists and lawmakers. Then, this past April, a Broward County man, John Kless, was arrested for leaving voicemails threatening to kill Democratic Sen. Cory Booker and Reps. Eric Swalwell, Rashida Tlaib, and Ilhan Omar.
Court records paint an ugly picture of Vernon’s aggressive and often violent behavior.
South Florida’s high ranking when it comes to prosecuting child sex trafficking might come as a surprise given the district’s controversial deal-making with Jeffrey Epstein, brokered by former Trump Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta. Nationwide, such prosecutions have plunged over the past two years despite overall federal prosecutions for crimes spiking under the Trump administration.
