There’s not a more legally hazardous job in Miami than taking the reigns of CONCACAF, the soccer federation in charge of North America, the Caribbean and Central America. The past past two jefes of the Miami Beach-based organization are already at the center of the biggest corruption scandal ever to envelope…
Miami Police Officer Vincent Miller has misused his Taser twice in the past two years while working off-duty at the Publix at 17th Street and Biscayne Boulevard. In 2013, he needlessly Tasered a homeless man and then tried to cover it up. Then last year — in a case New…
Just two years after the Justice Department found one local major local police department, Miami PD, liable of engaging “in a pattern or practice of excessive use of force through officer-involved shootings,” police through out the county still regularly have fatal encounters with suspects. According to a database maintained by The Guardian,…
In almost every other county in Florida, voters directly elect a sheriff to head up the county’s law enforcement office. Not in Miami-Dade. Back in 1966, voters here decided to abolish the position after years of suspe cted corruption in the department. Since then a Police Director, now appointed by…
Lamont Collins had no idea why a Miami cop handcuffed him and dragged him into a dark, unmarked room in the back of the Publix at NE 17th Avenue and Biscayne Boulevard. His terror only grew when the officer threw him to the floor and repeatedly held a charged Taser…
There’s two types of mothers on the day after thanksgiving: those who rush out to get Black Friday deals and those who need to get “the tree” and immediately get into Christmas mode. Well, if your mom was the later type and hoped to pick up a Christmas tree at…
Two years ago Derek Medina wrote in a caption a chilling photo of his wife’s slumping, lifeless body that, “I’m going to prison or death sentence for killing my wife.” This afternoon a jury decided he was right. A jury found Medina guilty of the second degree murder of his…
A former standout at Miramar High School, St Louis Rams wide receiver Stedman Bailey was presumably in town this week visiting family for the Holidays while serving a suspension for violating the league’s substance abuse policy. While sitting in an SUV last night with a cousin, and two young relieves…
Officer Miguel Romain was just a few months into his new job as a full-fledged Miami Beach cop when the routine call came in on Sunday: A burglar alarm was going off in a building near 51st Street and Alton Road. The former public service specialist hopped in a patrol…
In order to protect South Florida’s citizens, local police officers have a lot of tools at their disposal. One of them is a software program called DAVID — for Driver and Vehicle Information Database — that officers can use to look up anyone’s car and license plate info. For privacy…
Johnny Lubin, Jr, a 15-year-old Miami Northwestern student, was walking home Wednesday afternoon in Liberty City when a car drove up near him. Someone inside fired shots. Lubin, an outgoing kid and former prom king, was hit twice, once in the head and once in the abdomen. Hours later, he…
It was one of the most brazen shootings in Miami’s recent memory: Last September 27, while a crowd of young men and women danced and partied inside a small nightclub on Seventh Avenue called The Spot, dozens of bullets suddenly rained upon the club, igniting instant chaos. No one was…
Earlier this month, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement — the state agency that investigates fatal police-involved shootings — pleaded for more funding. Florida cops are killing so many suspects they simply can’t keep up with the cases. That dire backlog is only going to grow after this week. It’s…
Were you hoping to get to work this morning? Or perhaps you had a busy day at school ahead of you that you planned to attend? Maybe a flight to catch at MIA? Sorry, folks. It’s probably not going to happen today. Details are still scarce, but an early-morning shooting…
On a hot July afternoon, Steve Murphy was sweating inside a yellow, one-story house in West Little River. It was 1989, the height of the Cocaine Cowboy era, and Murphy and his partner, Kevin Stephens, were Drug Enforcement Administration agents working a sting deal on 17 kilos of coke. An…
Just after 9:30 p.m. October 28, at least three masked intruders barged into a home in Keystone Point, an exclusive waterfront enclave in North Miami. The house’s owner, Naim (who declined to provide his last name for fear of retribution) was brushing his teeth when he was led with a…
As the price of oil has spiraled to record lows this year, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has struggled to hang on to power. Shortages of everything from toilet paper to McDonald’s french fries have rocked Caracas as the official currency has tanked with the country’s most abundant natural resource. But…
Just over a year ago, Miami Beach Police Chief Dan Oates banned his officers from all off-duty work at SoBe nightclubs after a string of embarrassments, including a sergeant who got wasted while working at Mango’s Tropical Cafe. Today, Beach cops are not only back on the job — they’re…
Michelle Coleman had her baby daughter in her arms when the men materialized out of the darkness. Coleman, a 25-year-old mother of four with a pretty, roundish face and thick, straightened hair, was walking home to the apartment in Liberty Square where she’d lived for five years, a spartan place…
When the corpse emerged from the grave, a hole the size of a dime marred the skull. A femur and a finger were snapped like twigs, a clavicle was cracked, and lead lay in the chest. “Body was smoked and hosed after death,” the coroner wrote. Then came the conclusion:…
Cuando el cadáver emergió de la tumba, un hueco del tamaño de una moneda de diez centavos perforaba el cráneo. El fémur y un dedo estaban partidos como ramitas, la clavícula cascada y había plomo en el pecho. “El cuerpo fue quemado y rociado con agua luego de la muerte”,…
A video of a woman facing off against numerous workers at the Five Guys Burgers and Fries restaurant on South Beach’s Washington Avenue has gone viral with little information about what actually lead up to the brawl. The video open with an employee throwing what appears to be a stack…
