It seems like a police department in Miami-Dade County tries to make a huge weapon or ammo purchase every month. Since July, departments have asked for bulletproof vests, assault rifles, license-plate readers, sketchy gunshot detectors, and even free armored trucks. Those requests are almost always buried deep within county documents,…
From his home in Miami, Eric Cardenas felt a too familiar surge of sadness and anger. It was July 6, 2016, and he’d just heard the news about Philandro Castile, a 32-year-old cafeteria supervisor who was gunned down by a Minnesota police officer during a traffic stop. Castile’s girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds,…
Aaron Davidson was once a brilliant American soccer exec, the man who co-founded the North American Soccer League, the Miami FC and the reborn Fort Lauderdale Strikers. But behind the scenes, prosecutors say, he was also profiting handsomely — and illegally — from the beautiful game, in the form of…
Let’s get this over with: The photo above is real, the man is alive, and his name is Carlos Rodriguez. He is 31 years old and goes by the nickname “Half Head,” and the reason is obvious. Half Head lives in Miami and got into a car accident when he was…
The white Volkswagen SUV was mired in traffic around 1 p.m. yesterday at a busy Miami Gardens intersection when Miami-Dade Police caught up with it. The driver had stolen the ride from a nearby dealership earlier that day. As bystanders filmed from their cars, police swarmed the SUV, busting open…
In the recent years, South Florida police have quietly started stalking citizens using a wide array of 21st century technology. License-plate trackers have popped up across Miami-Dade County. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, scores of Florida cops have now use Stingray devices, which track a person’s location using…
The U.S. is one of the few developed nations in the world that still imposes the death penalty. But even among U.S. states, Florida’s death-penalty laws are behind the times. Florida was one of only three states where juries did not need to be unanimous to sentence someone to death…
One day in 2010, James Hoefling came home from work to find that his house had gone missing. Hoefling’s home was more mobile than most: He’d lived in a houseboat by the Dinner Key marina in Coconut Grove for 11 years. Hoefling, now 67, works as a marine technician. On…
As John Wilson cooked dinner for his family in March 2010, an eerie silence filled their cozy Plantation home. Usually around 6 p.m. on a school day, the place was bustling. Four kids were asking about dinner or playing videogames. John, a mild-mannered musician with salt-and-pepper hair and rimless glasses,…
On Sunday, a tourist from New York was gunned down on Ocean Drive around 7 a.m., just as South Beach was starting to wake up. Shot two times outside iconic sidewalk restaurant News Cafe, the young man was taken to Jackson Memorial Hospital, where he later died. This morning, Miami…
Today, Tony Bosch is a free man. After spending a little more than a year and a half in federal custody for orchestrating the biggest illegal steroid operation in pro sports history, Bosch walked out of a Miami halfway house yesterday. So what’s next for the onetime chief of Biogenesis,…
Had Miami Beach Police fired a rifle at 51-year-old David W. Winesett in December 2016, he might have survived. Last December, police say Winesett escaped a halfway house, robbed a bank, and allegedly waved a razor blade at police before they fired their guns directly into his chest in broad daylight…
As the gospel choir finished the last chords of “Going Up Yonder,” Deborah Frazier approached her brother’s powder-blue coffin. It was surrounded by heaping bouquets of baby’s breath and blue roses. For a moment, the cavernous sanctuary of the Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church was silent except the sound of her…
Last week, Miami-Dade County Police Director Juan Perez announced in a press conference that the department will spend $2.6 million over the next five years, and possibly another $3 million in the following five, on ShotSpotter, a police technology that uses microphones to listen for gunshots. Perez did not mention…
Miami-Dade County set its annual budget late Thursday night. According to the Miami Herald’s Doug Hanks, County Commissioners argued over whether it was worth spending $100,000 to revive the county’s Civilian Investigative Panel, which employs non-police civilians to investigate complaints against police. Many law-enforcement scholars agree civilian-led panels provide an…
Miami police can’t stop people from firing celebratory gunshots on holidays like New Year’s Eve and July 4. This past Independence Day, someone made the moronic decision to fire his or her gun in the middle of the tourist-heavy Bayside Marketplace downtown. Apparently, current Denver Broncos linebacker Brandon Marshall (not the…
In 2014, New Times reported that Miami-Dade County Police abandoned using ShotSpotter, a controversial police technology that uses microphones to listen for gunshot noises, after realizing it didn’t work very well. ShotSpotter’s “success in directly leading to the apprehension of individuals involved in shooting incidents [was] minimal,” MDPD told New Times that…
Terence Crutcher, a 40-year-old, black father of four, was killed by police in Tulsa, Oklahoma on Friday. He was shot to death, on video, after walking peacefully with his hands raised away from three cops. Crutcher, a Christian who regularly sang in church, had stopped his SUV in the middle…
When Andrew Mossberg, then 50, stumbled upon what he says was a man beating up a woman in Miami Beach in 2013, Mossberg immediately assumed the man was a thieving bandit. So Mossberg stepped in to help. It turned out the man harassing the woman, Phillipe Archer, was actually an…
Two years ago, Miami-Dade County closed the ninth floor of its Pretrial Detention Center, which held mentally ill inmates awaiting trial in putrid, dangerous, and obscene conditions. For years, CBS4 had dubbed the ward the “Forgotten Floor,”and the U.S. Department of Justice called the conditions there unconstitutional. But although the county is…
On Wednesday, New Times reported that the city of Coral Gables, which obtained two mine-resistant, ambush-protected armored military trucks (MRAPs) from the U.S. Department of Defense, was “graciously” donating one of the tank-like vehicles to Miami Beach. That city said it needed the truck to drive through flooded areas and protect…
In the two years since the Ferguson riots, local police departments have come under fire for buying needless military equipment and using it to crack down on peaceful protesters. Departments, including many in Miami-Dade County, have been lambasted for wasting tax dollars on surplus grenade launchers, anti-aircraft weapons, and armored…
