Crime & Police

Miami Beach is loud 365 days of the year, and 366 days when it’s a leap year. Pitbull sits atop an entire subgenre of pop-rap dedicated to singing about how, at its core, club-filled, liquor-fueled, sleep-deprived Miami Beach is an extremely loud place to be.

After WLRN caught him spreading misinformation about Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz’s referral to the controversial Promise disciplinary program, Broward Superintendent Robert Runcie blamed scattered record-keeping in the district. But a former assistant principal at the school where the program is housed now says Runcie is also misleading the public about how student discipline data is kept.

Hours after Miami Police Officer Mario Figueroa was charged with misdemeanor assault today, the city’s police union released a doozy of a statement defending Figueroa and insisting he hadn’t broken the law or department policy.

Last Thursday, a clip went viral of Miami Police Officer Mario Figueroa taking a running start and kicking the head of a defenseless, handcuffed black man.

Critics have slammed Broward County Public Schools Superintendent Robert Runcie all day amid news that — contrary to Runcie’s repeated claims — Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooter Nikolas Cruz was involved in the controversial Promise disciplinary program before becoming a mass killer. Now Runcie is pushing back by blaming inefficient record-keeping and insisting he gave the best information he had at the time about Cruz’s participation in Promise.

WLRN dropped a bombshell report this morning: After months of denials from Broward County Public Schools Superintendent Robert Runcie and other top officials, the district admitted that, in fact, Marjory Stoneman Douglas mass shooter Nikolas Cruz was assigned to the controversy-mired Promise program.

The City of Miami Police Department is back in the news for embarrassing reasons. This past Thursday, Facebook user Lisa Harrell posted footage of MPD Officer Mario Figueroa taking a running start and kicking a handcuffed black man, David V. Suazo, directly in the face. Miami PD claims in an arrest report…

The Miami Police Department took swift action yesterday after a bystander filmed Officer Mario Figueroa kicking a handcuffed man directly in the head. Newly appointed Chief Jorge Colina suspended the officer and promised a full investigation. But activists are still raging today, demanding to know why the other officers on the scene weren’t suspended and why Figueroa is suspended with pay.

Earlier today, the City of Miami Police Department issued an ominous statement: Chief Jorge Colina said he’d received a video of an officer clearly violating departmental policy. That cop had been relieved of duty, he reported, adding the department had sent the clip to the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office.

For almost ten years, Pastor Frank Diaz has been feeding the homeless in Overtown. But beginning last year, he says, he and his volunteers have been repeatedly stopped by Miami Police officers and told they’re no longer allowed to hand out food.

In January, Miami-Dade prosecutors charged 42-year-old Ana Watson with four felonies for allegedly stealing thousands from the North Bay Village condo board where she served as treasurer. The charges came after months of work by Det. Tom Columbano, a 30-year veteran who pieced together the alleged scheme to pass off photoshopped checks.

The strip search played out in broad daylight on a sidewalk near Mana Wynwood: As Wendy Matute screamed for help, two male Miami Police officers held down her arms while a female officer held her legs apart. Another female officer, Annette Delgado, unzipped Matute’s shorts, pulled them partway down, and reached inside to grab three baggies of suspected drugs.

Russell Cooper, a 77-year-old South Florida grandfather using a walker, went viral in 2014 after Boynton Beach Police released video of him somewhat pathetically trying to rob a local PNC bank while armed with little more than a pocketknife.

A federal grand jury today unsealed multiple criminal charges against Antwan Johnson, a guard accused of encouraging a group of young inmates to beat up 17-year-old Elord Revolte, a detainee at a juvenile facility. As first reported in the Miami Herald’s Pulitzer-nominated investigative series Fight Club, Revolte died August 31, 2015, from what appear to be injuries sustained during the beating.

Every year for nearly a decade, Fred Guttenberg took the stage at his daughter Jaime’s dance recital for a routine called “Dancing Dads.” The number featured all of the dance dads doing their best to follow choreography and ended with all of the girls joining their fathers onstage.

Al Crespo has never been shy about his past. Before he became a pugnacious blogger, he robbed banks and served years in prison. So when Crespo watched Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo publicly shame a city employee last night over an old arrest record, he became so irate he hopped into his car and sped to Dinner Key to lambaste Carollo in front of the commission.

Since 2014, a colony of homeless sex offenders has been rapidly growing by the railroad tracks near Hialeah. Nobody wants them there, including the dozens who call the ramshackle camp home. Everyone, from the Homeless Trust to the ACLU to the county commission, agrees the encampment is a public health and safety hazard. But for years, the sex offenders have said that restrictive county laws mean they have nowhere else to legally live and that county officials have failed to solve the problem.

When former Miami Beach Police Chief Carlos Noriega was hired to run the cop shop in North Bay Village in 2015, he set out to hire a trusted veteran without local ties to head the internal affairs department. That person would also tackle sensitive political cases if they arose. Noriega chose Sam Bejar, a retired MBPD vet with decades of experience.

For 26 years, Gustavo Falcon lived the mundane life of a middle-aged suburban-Orlando dad. He jogged, he worked an ordinary job, and — unbeknownst to all of his new friends and neighbors — he kept one eye over his shoulder for the federal agents he knew one day would catch up to him.

The morning of April 17, Wilbur Cauley left all of his belongings in their usual place: stacked by a fence under the I-395 overpass at NW First Court and 13th Street. It was in the middle of a four-block area where about 30 homeless Miamians live. That morning, Cauley, an Army veteran in his late 50s who served three years in…