Police unions are paid to defend cops who find themselves ensnared in legal trouble. That’s the basic reason those unions exist. But there’s a bit of a difference between providing legal support to a cop accused of shooting an innocent man and what Dade County Police Benevolent Association President John Rivera did last week.
This past Monday, Miami Police Lt. Javier Ortiz won a major court victory when he persuaded a judge to lift a temporary restraining order that had stripped him of his badge for nearly a month. But the very next night, he was yet again facing serious accusations before an official body.
Last week, a ludicrously fake story about the Supreme Court abolishing the teaching of Islam in public schools began spreading across conservative so-called news sites. The article circulated with clickbait-y headlines celebrating Donald Trump-appointed Justice Neil Gorsuch for supposedly pissing off Muslims and Obama.
In a three-day stretch last month, the following things happened on U.S. 1 between Miami and the Keys: Six people in three separate car accidents had to be airlifted to hospitals in one day; a head-on collision two days later left two women hospitalized, one in critical condition; and a rare American crocodile wandered onto the highway, causing a crash involving a Freightliner truck.
When Moonlight won Best Adapted Screenplay at this year’s Oscars, Miami playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney gave a shout-out to his hometown, waxing eloquently that “we can really be here and be somebody, two boys from Liberty City up here onstage representing the 305.” By the end of the night, when the film won Best Picture…
Valentina Villafane estaba sentada en su aula de segundo grado cuando una bomba de gas lacrimógeno explotó en su escuela. La directora de su escuela privada fuera de Barquisimeto, Venezuela, lo vio primero: un guardia nacional lanzaba la bomba que voló entre los barrotes de la puerta del recinto educativo…
Valentina Villafane was sitting in her second-grade classroom when the tear gas canister exploded. The principal of her private school outside Barquisimeto, Venezuela, saw it first — an errant volley from a national guardsman that flew between the bars of the school’s gate and rolled to the front door. The…
For the past month, Miami’s outspoken Fraternal Order of Police president, Javier Ortiz, has been relieved of duty with pay thanks to a restraining order a judge granted to a woman he’d doxxed on Facebook. Tomorrow he’ll rejoin the force after a judge lifted that order and returned his badge.
Everyone knows parking in Miami Beach is a nightmare. You can waste hours of your life circling for a precious curbside spot, only to have your horrendous parallel-parking skills cause a miniature traffic jam when you finally do come across a space. And God forbid your phone dies before it’s time to renew your parking session.
Donald Trump has been president for only 13 weeks (even if it feels like a brutal half-century in Twitter years), yet he’s already spent seven full weekends at Mar-a-Lago, his beachfront playground for the obscenely wealthy. That’s concerning for all kinds of reasons: the ethics of constantly pumping up a for-profit business run by his family, the security lapses in the sprawling mansion, the costs of protecting the president there.
Jose Felix “Pepi” Diaz (not to be confused with Miami-Dade County Commissioner Jose “Pepe” Diaz) was fired after two episodes on the reality show The Apprentice in 2006. He’d been tasked with coming up with a business proposal for Gillette, which was trying to sell some sort of five-razor-blade monstrosity to insecure men. Diaz ended up sleeping in on the day of his pitch and was fired for lack of leadership.
Willy Falcon and Sal Magluta ran the largest smuggling ring of the Miami’s cocaine-fueled heyday. The two high-school friends built a $2 billion trafficking empire, which snaked through multiple banks, states, properties, and even one speedboat-racing league. Though “Willy and Sal,” as they were known, were eventually caught and convicted after nearly a decade of court proceedings in the 1990s, Willy’s brother, Gustavo “Taby” Falcon, vanished 26 years ago before the feds could lock him up.
If it comes to fruition, American Dream Miami would be one of the largest malls in the nation. The $3 billion project is the definition of South Florida largesse: In addition to offering the standard list of luxury shops, American Dream would include an ice rink, a lake for submarine rides, a water park, a theme park, and an indoor ski slope.
All the painkillers, Band-Aids, and antibiotics in the world wouldn’t have made much of a difference to Angel Fernandez, the Scarface character whose dismemberment by chainsaw was the 1983 gangster flick’s most infamous scene. But today the building where the grisly attack was set is being converted into a CVS.
For all the debate, tears, and fury that President Trump’s short-lived “Muslim ban” caused, the public actually knows surprisingly little about what happened at airports. The exact techniques Customs and Border Protection agents used before courts quashed the ban have remained secret. And since the ban was suspended in February, Muslims across the nation, including Miami’s Muhammad Ali Jr., have been detained illegally anyway.
Donald Trump is so rich. Big-league (bigly?) wealthy. So wonderfully wealthy that he apparently owes a Miami paint store $300,000 for work at his Trump National Doral Miami resort. So wealthy he’s been fighting not to pay that $300,000 since last year. So wealthy that his lawyers officially lost an appeal yesterday and now he’s gotta pay that $300,000 or try to appeal all the way to the Florida Supreme Court.
Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle, the county’s top prosecutor, made history yesterday. For the first time in her 24 years on the job, she charged a Miami-area cop for an on-duty shooting when she filed attempted manslaughter charges against North Miami Officer Jonathan Aledda, who shot Charles Kinsey, an unarmed black man, in the leg last year.
Sen. Jose Javier Rodriguez says the state is too stingy when it comes to paying jurors.
Twenty-six years ago, the feds busted the biggest smuggling operations of the entire Cocaine Cowboys era, a $2 billion pipeline run by high-school pals Willy Falcon and Sal Magluta. It would take another decade of contentious court battles before the pair was finally convicted, wrapping up one of…
Miami’s top prosecutor, State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle, has faced a tidal wave of criticism from police-reform activists this year for her reluctance to prosecute cops who kill on the job. Today, Rundle did something she’s never done in her 24 years in office: charged an officer for an on-duty shooting.
Nothing can happen in Miami this year that will be funnier than Ben Carson getting stuck inside an elevator today. Nothing. There is no single image more hilarious than the look on Carson’s face as he walked through the elevator’s metal doors at Overtown’s Courtside Family Apartments and then realized they weren’t going to open. Carson and Miami-Dade County Public Housing Director Michael Liu were trapped inside the elevator for a solid 20 minutes this morning while firefighters searched for a way to free the two.
These are dark times for Miami Marlins fans. There’s a raw, Jose Fernandez-sized hole in this franchise, and the one comfort that Fish fans could lean on this year — hated owner Jeffrey Loria’s impending sale of the team — still looks a long way from happening. You’d forgive Fish faithful from feeling blue as they shuffled into Marlins Park for the home opener last night.
