Police & Law Enforcement

A woman named Yujing Zhang was apprehended trying to get into Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s Palm Beach mansion and resort.

On July 19, 2015, detectives arrived at Ronald O. Schwartz’s secluded Jupiter Farms home and found him lying on his bedroom floor, his head haloed by a pool of blood. Two back doors were open, and the entire house had been ransacked. A .40-caliber shell casing lay near him. The 65-year-old retired gynecologist and multimillionaire was dead.

Using the term “Oriental” to describe a person of Asian or Pacific Islander descent is pretty much a thing of the past. States including Washington and New York have long banned the word from official documents, and the federal government finally followed suit in 2016. That’s because the term has a history of marginalizing Asian immigrants and is considered offensive by many.

One might assume that South Beach residents enjoy living in a neon-lit, bass-thumping party zone. With some exceptions, many of them did, after all, choose to move to South Beach. But, in reality, quite a number of Miami Beach residents don’t actually like when crowds of people gather to drink and dance in public — and they seem to especially get upset if those crowds include large numbers of black and brown people.

Miami Beach began its spring break crackdown late last year, almost four months before the first college kids arrived. In November, police Chief Daniel Oates began sending letters to college administrators and fraternity presidents warning that law-breaking students would be arrested. The city even spent $33,000 on a hard-line law-and-order social media campaign targeting undergrads.

One man, McArthur Richard Sr., has lost 27 pounds. Another, Anthony Blackman, has dropped 16. Seven others haven’t eaten solid food for 17 days. So far, four mayors, six county commissioners, three police chiefs, and a host of state senators, school board members, and local leaders have stopped by …

A quick history refresher: After President Abraham Lincoln freed America’s slaves during the Civil War, white Southerners spent a great deal of time devising ingenious and evil ways of preventing black people from voting. Those restrictions morphed into the “Jim Crow” laws — among them were poll taxes, which forced…

Some Florida lawmakers claim SB 168, which forces towns to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is pro-law-enforcement. But today, one of the state’s most prominent cops, City of Miami Police Chief Jorge Colina, sharply criticized portions of the measure. Colina said if he were asked to check a crime…

At his sentencing for the 1983 murder of a West Palm Beach college student, Ronald Henry Stewart said he was pleading no contest because it was in his best interest. His attorney pointed out a slew of flaws in the case — a potentially faulty eyewitnesses, the use of jailhouse snitches, and fingerprint evidence that didn’t match Stewart’s prints. But Stewart had previously been convicted of multiple rapes, and he feared being executed if a jury convicted him of killing 20-year-old Regina Harrison.

Two American citizens who live in South Florida— Miamian Garland Creedle and Keys resident Peter Sean Brown — sued Miami-Dade and Monroe Counties after being wrongly held in jail and nearly deported thanks to mistaken paperwork from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Frighteningly, those two people are not alone. According…

When Miami-Dade Police violently dragged Dyma Loving to the ground and arrested her earlier this month, she was standing on the sidewalk telling officers that a man had pulled a gun on her. According to County Commissioner Joe Martinez, though, the 26-year-old black woman “was not being compliant,”…

Tension between South Beach spring breakers and older, whiter, richer, and stodgier residents has been leading up to this for years. But yesterday’s revelation was still shocking. Miami Beach officials announced that for the remainder of spring break, teams of police in riot gear will patrol Ocean Drive and the…

The jailhouse surveillance video clearly shows the deputy violently wrenching inmate Audra West up out of a chair, throwing her around the room, and dragging her into a strip-search room. Other female deputies then run into the room with the door shutting behind them. West says that inside the room,…

In December, 38-year-old Mabel Perez-Ordonez received good news. A letter from Miami-Dade Police stated she’d been the victim of indecent exposure. That meant the Nicaraguan native would be eligible for a U visa — a path to legal status for undocumented crime victims who cooperate with cops. The Hialeah mother…

The City of Miami currently operates a Civilian Investigative Panel, a group of everyday citizens who investigate complaints against Miami Police Department officers. The panel provides basic levels of accountability for the department, which has been regularly accused of committing civil-rights violations for decades. Naturally, the city’s police union has fought…

Former Miami Police union chief Capt. Javier Ortiz has an uncanny knack for worming his way out of trouble. During his 14 years with MPD, Ortiz has been hit with 38 citizen complaints — but only six have been sustained by Internal Affairs. He’s proud of this and has openly bragged about his IA file on Facebook.

For months, one of the most explosive court cases in the world has been playing out in Miami’s federal courthouse. Aleksej Gubarev, a tech entrepreneur from Cyprus, sued BuzzFeed News for defamation after the news outlet published the infamous “Steele Dossier” outlining alleged Russian government efforts to sway the 2016 election in favor of Donald Trump…

Tasers have been promoted to police departments in recent years as a safe way to de-escalate dangerous situations. Yet in reality, the devices are far from nonlethal — a 2017 Reuters investigation turned up 1,081 cases in which someone died after being shocked. Miami’s three largest police departments have also routinely misused Tasers: In 2014, New Times reported that local cops were tasing mentally ill people, the homeless, and children as young as 6.

On Tuesday, Miami developer Robert Zangrillo was charged with crimes as part of a sprawling, national FBI investigation into rich Americans who bribe colleges into admitting their spoiled, less-than-intelligent kids. Zangrillo allegedly paid an intermediary to make it look as if his daughter, who’d failed an art history class among…

A disturbing video shared on social media last night shows several Miami-Dade Police officers violently arresting a black woman who had called for help after someone pulled a gun on her and her daughter. Juan Perez, a spokesperson for the department, said on Twitter that the officer involved has been relieved of duty and the incident is being investigated.