Florida’s law enforcement community is staffed by far too many adult children. Just ask State Trooper Donna Jane Watts. In October 2011, Watts stopped a City of Miami cop traveling 120 mph on the highway and arrested him; in retaliation, 88 police officers used the confidential police driver database to stalk her.
From 2002 until 2009, celebrity hotelier and jet-setter André Balazs owned Miami Beach’s historic Raleigh Hotel on Collins Avenue. And until this past March, he ran the world-renowned Standard Hotels brand, which included South Beach’s Standard Hotel, one of the best-known vacation properties in South Florida. Balazs is a regular on the Miami party circuit, popping up at celebrity get-togethers all over town and hosting events during Art Basel Miami Beach.
John Jackson, a 50-year-old fast-food employee from Fort Lauderdale, was working on a broken-down car at a convenience store around 1 a.m. October 21 when a tall, lanky man in a white tank top approached. The two talked for a few minutes until the man suddenly pulled out a gun, shot Jackson once in the head, and calmly jogged away.
The swagger is back, baby! The University of Miami Hurricanes are winning nationally televised games, threatening a national title run, and pissing off racists by wearing huge gold jewelry. And this past Saturday, delirious Canes fans finally turned Hard Rock Stadium into something approximating the glory days at the Orange Bowl.
Hugo Menjivar was just trying to help out a friend who couldn’t drive home. Instead, he says, he ended up arrested by cops on the scene who demanded his license, ran his name through a database and found a hit for a warrant in California. The only problem: The warrant wasn’t…
On the heels of a high-profile shooting of an unarmed black therapist last summer, the North Miami Police Department has been dogged by allegations of racial bias and police misconduct. In the aftermath, the city fired police chief Gary Eugene and appointed assistant chief Larry Juriga to stand in as his interim replacement.
To be honest, a cocaine-addicted Miami Dolphins executive costume would have made sense for each of the past 50 Halloweens. But after Fins offensive line coach Chris Foerster was caught on video earlier this month snorting cocaine in the team’s offices, asking to lick cocaine off a Nevada model’s “pussy,” and using said model as a “cocaine platter,” the now-disgraced coach had to expect that some Schadenfreude-obsessed folks would make fun of him at Halloween parties.
When news broke Friday that a grand jury had approved its first indictments in Roger Mueller’s probe into the Trump campaign’s alleged collusion with Russia, longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone lashed out hard at the messengers. The South Florida resident exploded on Twitter at CNN’s Don Lemon and the New York Times’ Charles Blow — and now has been banned from the site for his tirade.
The short videos were sent to an FBI agent by a confidential informant. In the clips, a man in a black mask stands in front of an ISIS flag and outlines a brutal plot: He wants to copy the Boston marathon terrorists and detonate a bomb in Miami in the name of ISIS. The man says his motivation is simple: Donald Trump’s policies have driven him to support the Islamist terrorists.
Point Blank Enterprises, a Pompano Beach body armor manufacturer that makes bulletproof vests and body cameras, faces a class-action lawsuit from police unions in Florida and Ohio. The case, filed last week in federal court, claims officers across the nation are being sent out on patrol in faulty bulletproof vests that cost $700 a pop.
By the time George Miyares was hired as a police officer for the Village of Biscayne Park in March 2013, he’d been rejected by nine other law enforcement agencies across South Florida, a recently filed federal lawsuit alleges.
This past Wednesday, newly minted Miami Police Capt. Javier Ortiz, the most infamous, nakedly rude, and loudmouthed cop in South Florida, stepped down from his post as head of the city’s Fraternal Order of Police. But “stepped down” might be giving him too much credit: He voluntarily demoted himself to vice president and put his well-known buddy, Sgt. Edward Lugo, in charge of the union.
For months, Miami Beach commissioners have been waging war against a crime wave they insist is sweeping the city. They’ve voted to curb alcohol sales and close the beach earlier, and agreed to let voters decide whether last call on Ocean Drive should come at 2 instead of 5 a.m.
Hours before City of Miami Police Lt. Javier Ortiz was promoted to captain yesterday, he announced he is “stepping down” from running the city’s police union, Lodge 20 of the Fraternal Order of Police, to concentrate on his new on-duty responsibilities.
Lt. Javier Ortiz, the head of Miami’s police union, was briefly removed from street duty earlier this year after he harassed a woman, posted her private phone number online, and earned himself a temporary restraining order that landed him on desk duty and stripped him of his gun.
When former North Miami Beach Mayor Myron Rosner pleaded guilty last year to campaign-finance violations, a condition of his probation was, naturally, that he not commit crimes while he was under supervised release. Well, this is a former Miami-area public official we’re talking about, so here we are: Rosner, age 57, is back in jail today after getting caught allegedly defrauding an investor to the tune of $150,000.
If you don’t like living in an apartment complex where fire alarms can go off anytime, you have two options. One, you could simply not live in an apartment complex. Or two, in the case of Miami Beach’s Erik Agazim, you could allegedly strap a tactical vest to your chest, buckle on a Kevlar helmet, grab your long rifle and machete sitting around, and hack down fire alarms in your Sunset Harbour building.
Editor’s note: In 1997, Miami New Times published a story by Sean Rowe, “Glorious and Notorious,” that helped inspire the 2006 documentary Cocaine Cowboys. Rowe’s piece described the Mutiny Hotel at 2951 S. Bayshore Dr. in Coconut Grove as a mecca for the 1980s’ cocaine kingpins, adding this: “Fact always…
No amount of government PR can erase the images the Miami Herald published today. Investigative reporters Carol Marbin Miller and Audra D.S. Burch obtained stomach-churning video of Florida juvenile offenders fighting one another after being groomed as attack mobs by state guards.
After Miami Beach Police fired 116 bullets at 20-year-old Raymond Herisse’s car on Memorial Day in 2011 and hit four innocent bystanders, the department banned cops from shooting into moving cars. Departments all over the country discourage the practice, since killing a driver can turn a car into a multi-ton…
A person’s right to make fun of elected officials on the internet is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. So Miami Beach Police have quite a high bar to clear if they want to prove that resident Ernesto Orsetti was illegally “impersonating a cop” when he created a fake Twitter profile purporting to be Miami Beach Police spokesperson Ernesto Rodriguez.
In early 2016, Hialeah Police Officer Louis Herrera applied for a promotion to sergeant, feeling confident about his chances. He was excited about the job, which promised a raise and a bigger role at the department. But despite scoring well on the required exam, he was wasn’t chosen. The same thing happened when he applied again a year later.
