As the public spat unfolded in Tallahassee this past April, it felt like the perfect metaphor for the raging culture wars in Trump’s America. Rep. Kionne McGhee, a black Democrat from Miami, was fighting for a monument to the innumerable slaves who worked and died in Florida before the Civil…
Stephanie Myers was onstage at a Democratic unity rally at the Knight Center, giving a speech about answering the call to get involved, when a voice rang out from the crowd. “Run for office!” a woman yelled. Myers, a lead organizer of the filled-to-capacity Women’s Rally of South Florida, laughed…
When 14-year-old Martin Lee Anderson was murdered by police in Panama City in 2006, Jasmen Rogers was just starting college at Florida State. Then only 17, she remembers it as the first time she understood “wow, the world isn’t fair for black people.” Eleven years later, Rogers is one of…
When a tipster told Miami Waterkeeper that a leaky sewage pipe was spewing human waste right into Biscayne Bay, the environmental organization wasted no time sending a diver to investigate. Sure enough, they discovered the pipe was blasting the bay with thousands of gallons of harmful waste. But the worst…
Megachurches are often scams. Their owners and preachers become obscenely wealthy and don’t have to pay taxes. And a remarkably huge percentage of megachurch leaders become ensnared in ethically dubious (at best) conduct: Ultra-rich Houston pastor Joel Osteen infamously neglected to open his megachurch to Hurricane Harvey victims for days…
Last week, the FBI released its yearly log of hate crimes reported across the nation. In Florida, the data appears to show that hate-crime reports jumped 33 percent between 2015 and 2016. But that wasn’t the entire story: Many of both the Sunshine State’s and the nation’s largest police departments appear to be neglecting to report hate crimes to the FBI.
Wynwood brewery J. Wakefield Brewing is working on rushing out its new Turnover IPA in the hopes it will be ready to hit Canes fans’ lips in time for their team’s bowl game. The beer is named for the chunky gold necklace that Canes coaches award players on the sideline after they record turnovers.
In 2010, the Florida Housing Finance Corporation, a state body that loans money to build affordable housing, flunked an Atlanta developer called the American Opportunity Foundation (AOF) “due to past defaults, assignments, bankruptcies, or foreclosures” issued against the company’s properties in years past. As of 2010, state regulators warned that 22 of the 80 loans listed on the foundation’s report at the time were in default, so “AOF is not considered an acceptable general partner.”
A Miami ordinance allows for up to 100 pedicabs to operate within city limits, but unnecessary obstacles in permitting have stifled pedicab companies from breaking in. Consequently, Miami is one of few major cities without pedicabs as part of its public transportation system.
Shortly after earning a medical degree from the University of Miami in 1958, Ybor City native Fernando “Ferdie” Pacheco set up a family practice in Overtown, Miami’s historic black neighborhood. Much like it is today, the area was mired in poverty.
When Monroe County Sheriff’s deputies arrived at a small bungalow on a sandy Key Largo side street in October 2015, they found the worse murder scene the Keys had seen in more than two decades: a young couple, Tara Rosado and Carlos Ortiz, brutally executed in their bedroom just a few feet from Rosado’s three young children.
Every time Miami Beach’s Animal Recovery Mission (ARM), the undercover animal-abuse investigative group led by former military contractor Richard Couto, releases a video, it gets that much harder to eat meat or drink milk from South Florida cows. This month has been a doozy for Couto. First, ARM last week released film of animal handlers at one Okeechobee farm kicking cows.
As New Times revealed in an investigation published Tuesday, former Calvary Chapel Fort Lauderdale Pastor Bob Coy — who once led the largest megachurch in Florida — was accused in 2015 of molesting a girl for more than a decade, beginning when she was 4 years old. Coy was never charged in the case and had already resigned from Calvary over an admitted string of extramarital affairs.
In March 2014, David Velasquez called police to report the theft of his work tools. But when Broward Sheriff’s deputies arrived, he says, the cops were more concerned about his immigration status than the crime. They ended up placing him under arrest, Velasquez says — and breaking his leg while taking him into custody.
A few months ago, a Coral Gables homeowner made national headlines when he put his $6.4 million mansion on the market and said he’d accept payment in Bitcoin. So when a seller approached luxury real-estate agent Eric Fernandez with a similar proposition, he was ready for the challenge.
Miami is known for getting slammed by hurricanes, which tend to blow down power lines. So after Irma knocked out electricity for roughly 90 percent of Florida Power & Light’s customers in September, many residents asked why most of FPL’s lines are still above ground. The company is now reportedly “considering” burying more of its lines, but one Miami-Dade County commissioner thinks there’s a faster route to harden Florida against storms. She wants the state to force FPL to put lines underground.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio will probably never be president because he once drank water like a doofus on national television four years ago. The moment, which came during a State of the Union rebuttal, was dissected with Zapruder-film-like intensity, Poland Spring got in on the action, and Rubio cemented his status as a frightened, sweaty weirdo who lost his cool over eight ounces of spring water.
For decades, José Miguel Battle Sr. ran La Corporación, a ruthless organized-crime syndicate also known as the Cuban Mafia. It made more than a billion dollars on gambling rings and used arson, beatings, and assassins to deal with its enemies. His son, José Miguel Battle Jr., rose through the ranks to help run the criminal enterprise as the family became one of the richest in Miami.
In case you missed it, the U is back — and so are the haters. Many people love the Miami Hurricanes, but so many more hate them. Here are our best guesses as to why.
Prison inmates — especially those awaiting trial — cannot legally consent to sex with guards, supervisors, or anyone else who holds that much power over their lives in government custody. That should be common sense, and it’s why the federal government defines sex between prison guards and inmates as rape. For that same reason, a prison guard at the Federal Detention Center (FDC) in Miami was sentenced Tuesday to eight months’ imprisonment after pleading guilty to raping a woman under his care.
It turns out that repeatedly holding diet-Nazi presidential rallies in a state already known for housing millions of unhinged lunatics might not have been a great way to spend 2016. According to FBI data released yesterday, Florida cops reported 96 hate incidents last year. That’s up from 72 in 2015…
Recently, the Trump administration denied environmental protection to the Florida Keys mole skink, whose habitat is projected to disappear in the next 40 years due to sea-level rise. Now the Center for Biological Diversity is threatening a lawsuit to fight the administration’s blatant disregard for climate science and the species affected by it.
