When Sgt. Walter Clark strutted the stone-cold halls of the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center, the keys clinked a little louder on his chain. In that big house, Clark was a big man, bigger than his rank of sergeant implied. Within the county’s sprawling 2000-employee jail system, Clark had become…
Thirteen years ago H.T. Smith started a riot in Miami. It was a quiet riot, one fought not in the streets by burning but in boardrooms, hotels, and restaurants all around the county. Smith, backed by a handful of other black lawyers (mostly women, he notes), organized a nationwide black…
Last year, while he was deputy commander of investigations at the Miami Police Department, Capt. David Rivera sent a memo to then-Chief Raul Martinez about fingerprinting police officers. All officers are fingerprinted as part of their background checks; those records are also used at crime scenes to discern which prints…
For more than a year the Florida Department of Law Enforcement has been investigating four high-level Miami police officers suspected of stealing money intended to pay for off-duty security at several public housing sites. The case quickly took on a significance among Miami cops greater than the alleged misdeeds of…
Battleground Anyone walking into the E2 Café on 107th Avenue, across from Florida International University, hoping to get in a little e-mailing is likely to be surprised. The room behind the smoked-glass windows is not a typical Internet café, with a couple of terminals and a two-head espresso machine. This…
Jack Penrod knows how to throw a party. In the mid-Eighties his Fort Lauderdale nightclubs were magnets for thousands of college kids on spring break. But his formula for success — loads of beer, loud music, and wet T-shirt contests — proved to be his undoing. In response to residents…
Miami’s business community has high hopes for achieving hemispheric grandeur and reaping an economic windfall worth billions of dollars if all goes well at a meeting to be held here this November. Known as a ministerial, the meeting will bring together trade ministers from 34 countries in the Western Hemisphere…
The NAACP’s national convention this past week in Miami Beach was a big deal. It’s an honor that such a prestigious national organization chose us for its annual gathering spot. It makes sense, too. All our racial strife aside, diversity isn’t just a politically correct buzzword here; it’s a hot,…
Hernán Marcelo Vega should have his own infomercial describing his recipe for fast cash. Sure, it involves skirting a few hefty federal laws. And yes, it centers on supplying guns to terrorists and guerrilla groups that could kidnap and kill thousands. But Vega, and dozens of other gunrunners in South…
Sunday, June 29: The new Parrot Jungle is missing just one little thing: jungle. The concrete-to-landscaping ratio at this new Watson Island location must be something like 50/50. That’s a lot of concrete. And in case you didn’t know, bird poop really shows up on concrete. Like in the three-story…
Four teenage girls sit at tables outside the Starbucks across from the University of Miami, sipping coffee and pouring out a tale of woe. The subject of the girls’ angst is Mike Thompson, a substitute teacher at Palmetto High School in Pinecrest who is, in their view, the Sen. Rick…
Once upon a time in America, cars, movies, and adolescents were all new ideas. Kids courted over cream sodas then necked with each other. In cars. At drive-ins. Two straws in one drink, two bodies in one back seat. Today some call that “innocence,” “a simpler time,” “a better time.”…
Miami-Dade Community College’s recent efforts to purchase the landmark Freedom Tower may have violated several state and federal laws, according to former prosecutors familiar with the planned transaction. The former state and federal prosecutors, who did not wish to be identified by name, believe the intricate deal, advanced by MDCC…
1. Dusk on May 13. Mayor Manny Diaz is aboard the Island Lady, an executive yacht that sails from the Miami River behind the Hyatt Regency in downtown Miami. Hizzoner is playing host to several dozen high-ranking officials from the international consulates, like Finland’s then-Consul General William Spohrer; Germany’s Consul…
State legislators at the end of another bruising session in the capital are not unlike a football team coming back from an away game. They hop a plane, kick back, and relive in exaggerated detail every point won and lost. Some even think ahead to the next contest. A few…
Joe Martinez is picking quite a fight. The District 11 county commissioner recently asked Miami-Dade’s manager to study the possibility of merging the county’s police department and its corrections department. By even broaching the subject, Martinez, chairman of the commission’s public safety committee, is squaring off with several politically noisy…
“Call Us Essential” is Miami-Dade Community College’s catchy advertising slogan. And essential to that essential-ness, MDCC president Eduardo Padrón quietly resolved in January to use a lot of public money to buy a very symbolic sixteen-story building in downtown Miami. Specifically Padrón decided it was essential to give Jorge Mas…
WINNERS Katy Sorenson She didn’t like him when he was incompetent boy-mayor of Homestead (her district includes that hapless southern community). In January 2001 she voted against appointing him manager, and she fought with him repeatedly since then, all but calling him a sneaky liar for trying to keep alive…
Things are heating up at the Miami firefighters’ union. The boys there are hot under the collar because of a recent column I wrote. Let’s just say I won’t be invited to the fireman’s ball this year. (Okay, that’s enough.) A few weeks ago I wrote about problems inside the…
Usually Sebastian Ordoñez is a racecar driver only when he’s pushing toy cars across his bedroom floor. The eight-year-old will sputter engine noises between his lips as he maneuvers imaginary Formula One racetracks all over the globe. “In like Brazil, Australia, lots of places,” he says. He’ll be a star…
Reina Morgan, a 43-year-old janitor who earns $11.55 an hour cleaning airplane cabins at Miami International Airport, lives paycheck to paycheck. After she pays her share to the federal government, including her contributions to Medicare and Social Security, Morgan clears about $899 every two weeks, just enough to cover her…
On a hot June night in 1991, two men in a Toyota inched through the streets of Liberty City. A riot was brewing and New Times staff writer Sean Rowe and reporter Rick Bragg, then with the St. Petersburg Times, wanted to see it firsthand. The impending violence followed news…
