Famed environmentalist Marjory Stoneman Douglas lived most of her 108 years in an unassuming English tutor-style cottage in Coconut Grove. Inside the small house, the so-called Mother of the Everglades wrote her seminal book, The Everglades: River of Grass, and organized conservation efforts that would help save the vast, singular natural gem. She called her home “a workshop, more than a house.”
Last week, activists warned that the Glades County Detention Center was abusing Muslim detainees and refusing to let them observe Ramadan. Lawyers with the groups Muslim Advocates and Americans for Immigrant Justice warned there were only eight days of the Islamic holy month left and begged ICE and Glades County Sheriff David Hardin, who runs the jail, to change their ways before time ran out.
After picking up her high schooler one day in December, Alison Paneque and her 15-year-old daughter stopped at a Coconut Grove juice bar for an after-school snack. But as Paneque pulled out of the parking lot, a Miami Police officer stormed up to her car and went on a curse-filled tirade.
This past October 31, Jose Alfonso, a former City of Miami cop working as an investigator for Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle’s office, was heralded as a hero after he used his government-issued gun to wound an armed robber at a CVS in Perrine. Barely seven months later, on June 4, Alfonso was fired. The reason: He had repeatedly threatened to shoot and kill his co-workers…
Carlos Curbelo, the congressman for South Miami-Dade and the Florida Keys who voted in 2017 for a failed Obamacare-repeal package and successful tax cut for the wealthy, appears to be trying to pin his 2018 reelection bid on a last-ditch effort to reinstate the DREAM Act. Curbelo’s district voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016…
Being a baby isn’t all nap time and cuteness. There’s the whole diaper thing and the limited menu, plus strangers constantly getting in your face. It can be rough.
Whatever the reasoning behind it, Miami doesn’t exactly have the greatest reputation in terms of fan bases around the country. Actually, that’s putting it nicely: Most people think sports fans in Miami are a disgrace. They really dislike us. We’re like putting ketchup on eggs. They scoff at us and tell the people who are OK with us that we are actually very bad.
It looks very likely that the biggest sporting event on Earth could land in South Florida in eight years. This morning, FIFA voted to give the 2026 World Cup to a joint bid from the United States, Canada, and Mexico — and Miami was one of the host cities pitched in the winning package.
In recent years, Miami-Dade County has been held up as a model for how the criminal justice system should handle people with mental illness or developmental disabilities. Much of that can be attributed to the work of Circuit Judge Steve Leifman, who created a jail diversion program for those with mental illness and developed a framework for “crisis intervention training” to help cops handle calls involving people with mental health issues.
The GEO Group, the second-largest private-prison operator in America, is headquartered in Boca Raton and loves greasing the Florida political system. GEO is one of the most powerful political donors in the state. You’d be hard-pressed to find a Republican politician who hasn’t accepted a few thousand dollars in campaign bucks from the giant, and more than a fair share of local Democrats have done the same.
The strangest episode yet of The Apprentice aired last night. Dennis Rodman wore a pot-based cryptocurrency T-shirt and a MAGA hat while weeping on-camera. America’s big orange president wandered around a plush Singapore hotel for hours and then waxed eloquent about North Korea’s real-estate potential. Then he glad-handed…
Broward Teachers Union president Anna Fusco was visiting Olsen Middle School to investigate problems reported to her by teachers at the school. When she came out of a bathroom, she found an angry principal. The school’s head administrator, Valerie Harris, told her, “We’re not going to have any further conversation” and “You need to leave campus.”
In a small village like Biscayne Park, where crime is rare and local cops often have little to do besides keep an eye out for minor crimes such as car burglaries and vandalism, keeping pristine stats is all that matters. When your department has only a few dozen crimes a year to investigate, it looks pretty bad if you can’t solve them.
Miami New Times’ annual Best of Miami issue lands online this morning. For hundreds of our staff’s picks on the finest places to eat and drink and the most notable people and personalities who defined South Florida over the past year, check out the full issue. Here’s a quick preview of our pick for Best Team President: Miami Dolphins President Tom Garfinkel.
Miami New Times’ annual Best of Miami issue lands online this morning. For hundreds of our staff’s picks on the finest places to eat and drink and the most notable people and personalities who defined South Florida over the past year, check out the full issue. Here’s a quick preview of our pick for Best Politician: Coral Gables Mayor Raul Valdes-Fauli.
Before deporting anyone, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents are supposed to ask refugees, asylum seekers, and anyone else they meet at the nation’s borders whether they’re fleeing persecution in another country. José Crespo-Cagant says that after he came out as gay while living in Mexico in 2002, he was fired…
Rapper XXXTentacion, a Broward County musician named Jahseh Onfroy, has a startling history of alleged physical and verbal abuse toward women. New Times last week published a startling look at Onfroy’s career: In a long-form profile, reporter Tarpley Hitt spoke to both Onfroy, who is living in his Parkland home on house arrest, as well as Onfroy’s alleged victim and former girlfriend, Geneva Ayala.
West of Miami is Big Cypress National Preserve, an expanse of prairie, bog, and hardwood forest that includes dwarf cypress trees. These rarely grow taller than 15 feet. They provide roosting sites for bluebirds, food for the cypress fox squirrel, and scratching posts for the Florida panther and black bear.
North Miami Beach Mayor George Vallejo pleaded guilty in April to a raft of campaign-finance violations, including diverting at least $5,000 in campaign money to shell corporations he and his family used to pay off personal expenses. Vallejo, age 51, stepped down as mayor and received three months of house arrest plus probation.
The chef-turned-television-host filmed several episodes of his shows in Miami. He would always ask local chefs and celebrities to act as tour guides and ambassadors. The list of Miamians tasked with showing him around included Kris Wessel, Michelle Bernstein, Michael Schwartz, and Richard Hales.
On November 2, 2014, Jennifer Harper called 911 about a domestic dispute with her husband. But when Broward Sheriff’s deputies arrived at the couple’s Weston home that night, they decided to take her, not her husband, into custody.
In 2012, Miami-Dade County became one of the first places to test a gunshot-detection technology called ShotSpotter, which uses acoustic sensors to alert police to gunfire. But after a year of the pilot program, the county abandoned the system over concerns about its effectiveness: Officers were able to confirm only 50 shootings of 1,000 supposedly detected by ShotSpotter, and the department couldn’t point to a single crime the technology helped solve.
