Cradling a heavy box of Budweiser against his flour-dusted apron, Mario Medina clicks open the door and greets two waitresses behind the counter at La Cascada, a retro Cuban pizza parlor in Northwest Miami-Dade. Besides the voice of a sports commentator on the TV and sporadic blips from arcade games…
On March 8, an Uber driver named Sergio Morales pulled over at 729 SW First Street at 2:30 a.m. to pick up a customer when Miami Police Department Officer Daniel Crocker rapped on the window. When the driver asked Crocker if he was a cop or a security guard, he says, the…
In Florida, speeding tickets cost a heck of a lot more if you’re driving more than 10 mph over the speed limit. As anyone who’s ever been pulled over knows, the interaction with an officer can sometimes resemble a negotiation: If you play your cards right, you could get off with a warning or perhaps a cheaper ticket for, ahem, getting caught driving exactly 79 mph on the highway instead of 80.
The cops were intrigued by Margie Bowman’s story, but she wasn’t the first woman to claim that her husband had killed Eileen Adams.
This past Friday, Donald Trump stood in front of a crowd of cops and told them to bang their suspects’ heads against their cruisers, in a clear endorsement of police brutality. So far, only two Miami-area police chiefs have stepped up and said publicly that Trump’s comments were wrong, and none did so voluntarily.
So, uh, bodies might be buried in the backyard of a historic pump house on Miami’s Upper Eastside. The building, which was built in the 1920s, at one time was the home of serial killer Robert Bowman, and a New Times feature story published this week details that when cops were questioning Bowman in 1982 over the rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl from Ohio, Bowman said he had killed someone else and buried the body behind the pump house.
In May, New Times broke the news that Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle, the top prosecutor in a county of 2.7 million people, had not closed an investigation into the 2009 killing of Lawrence McCoy, a semihomeless man who was shot to death by a disgraced Miami Beach Police officer.
From Henry Flagler to Big Sugar, abusing the environment is a proud Florida pastime. The Sunshine State is a natural wonder, full of rare birds, beautiful fish, and people hellbent on killing every last living thing they encounter. Take, for instance, this week: On Monday, Capt. Mark “the Shark” Quartiano, the infamous Miami shark hunter New Times profiled in 2016, caught a group of would-be anglers torturing a shark by dragging it behind their boat until it died.
Under a canopy of twisted oaks and fluttering palms, an old coral-rock structure stands just off Biscayne Boulevard on the Upper Eastside of Miami. On a recent balmy Sunday, a small crowd gathered in the terraced backyard for brunch. They dined at café tables scattered amid tropical flora. In the…
Palmetto Bay Councilman David Singer readily admits he has a bit of a temper. In fact, the newly elected politician is suing a former opponent who posted audio of an expletive-packed tirade he left in a voicemail message.
Internationally known for its historic architecture, sultry beaches, and bumping nightclubs, South Beach has always had another claim to fame: its scandals. From the days of Prohibition to the era of the Cocaine Cowboys to the gruesome murder of Gianni Versace, the city has been plagued by crime and corruption since its earliest years.
If there are two things Floridians are fantastic at, it’s wrestling alligators and racketeering. This week, New Times chronicled one group of particularly enterprising Sunshine State residents who combined the two: an alligator-thieving ring that took the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission two years of undercover tracking to nab.
When a North Miami church worker was found guilty of molesting a 9-year-old girl who was attending a youth program, he was sentenced to ten years in prison and registered as a sexual predator. But now the victim’s family says the church, Horeb French Seventh-Day Adventist, should be held responsible,…
The last time O.J. Simpson lived in Miami, he allegedly spiraled into drug addiction, had the FBI raid his house, and by most accounts allowed the city’s worst impulses to totally consume him. According to the recent documentary O.J.: Made in America, the football star-turned-accused murderer sank deep…
Andrea Landa and two friends were sitting in her parked car one Sunday night when a trio of young police officers walked up with flashlights. The cops checked the friends’ IDs, but wouldn’t let them leave. Instead, over the next two hours, the officers toyed with their guns, told one of…
In February, the Miami-Dade County Commission made a Faustian bargain: The county said it would start holding undocumented people in jail for the feds, all to shed its label as a “sanctuary” community and avoid President Donald Trump’s scorn. Given that some 156,000 undocumented people live in Miami, this terrified…
Caked in mud, the black Chevy pickup made a careful left turn from the main highway onto a dirt driveway in rural Southwest Florida. Four young men in jeans and scuffed-up cowboy boots hopped out to meet their new business partner, a lanky, middle-aged Hawaiian guy named Curtis Blackledge. After…
Gentry Lane is used to getting insulting messages from strangers. That comes with the territory when you run an activist organization like her Rebel Action Network. But one recent message she got was particularly unhinged — and when she clicked on the sender’s profile, she was shocked to see that…
After a Homestead cop tried to run him off the road, Eric McDonough started keeping tabs on the local police. The Homestead resident, who has a doctorate in organic thermochemistry, started filming cops, criticizing the department at public meetings, and demanding the city institute a body-camera program. As a thank-you, McDonough…
While supposedly transferring data to a customer’s new iPhone one day, an employee at a Kendall T-Mobile store decided to go on a little fishing expedition through her photos and videos. When he found some that piqued his interest — nudes and videos of the woman having sex — he took the liberty of sending them to himself and then forwarded them to a few friends.
Since the 1990s, police departments across the nation have reevaluated when to chase suspects. If someone flees, cops’ first instinct is to follow; thousands of TV episodes, back to Miami Vice and Starsky and Hutch, have trained the public that a cop’s number one job is to chase down perpetrators, with no apparent concern for public property or consequences.
This week, New Times took a deep dive into what authorities allege to have been a huge “purple drank” ring that supplied codeine-and-promethazine laced cough syrup (A.K.A. “liquid heroin”) to hip-hop stars including Chris Brown and Lil Wayne. Harrison Garcia, the group’s alleged ringleader, was arrested earlier this year, and…
