Miami Gardens Sgt. Javier Romaguera’s credibility has been called into question since at least 2009, when he was first accused of filing a false police report. Over the next several years, his reputation became so tarnished the U.S. Attorney’s Office stopped prosecuting his cases. In April 2015, the feds notified his employer they would no longer even use him as a witness.
In August 2016, North Miami Beach Mayor George Vallejo weirdly posted a video on Twitter explaining he was the subject of an investigation by the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office. Without getting into any details, Vallejo tweeted that “the truth will come out when the process is complete.”
With fighter jets on its tail, a Cessna nine-seater streaked through the air over Las Marías, a tiny hamlet with unpaved roads and a single airstrip tucked deep in the Honduran jungle. The plane dipped and then came in for a landing. Government troops, who had been alerted not long…
In the past week, South Floridian Ericson Harrell has shared memes claiming that fluoride is dangerous to human beings, that 9/11 might have been orchestrated by the U.S. government, that trusting the government is “a form of mental illness,” and that the Parkland shooting survivors are “paid actors” who helped the feds stage a false-flag attack in February.
In December, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Louisiana shackled 92 Somali immigrants into airplane seats, fired the jet off toward their home country in eastern Africa, allegedly beat the men bloody and forced them to relieve themselves in their seats, mysteriously turned the plane around in Senegal, and…
Yesterday North Bay Village’s new city manager, Marlen Martell, called in Police Chief Carlos Noriega and offered him a choice: Either resign or be fired on the spot. Noriega says he was stunned, and not just because he felt he’d significantly improved the village’s force in his two and a half years on the job.
Surveillance video obtained by blogger Al Crespo shows two City of Miami Police officers repeatedly punching, choking, and tackling an apparently unarmed man after the suspect attempted to run away at a gas station. The clip begins by showing the man in question walking calmly away from a convenience store…
While they’re locked up, inmates rely on books and letters to learn new skills and keep in contact with their loved ones and the outside world. But administrators in charge of the Federal Correctional Complex in Coleman, Florida, have suddenly banned prisoners from receiving books, greeting cards, and letters written in crayon or marker, according to internal memos first obtained by the Families Against Mandatory Minimums. The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida tells New Times it’s researching how to fight the move.
In a federal courtroom in Miami this past Tuesday, Chief Judge K. Michael Moore read the arrest history of local car dealer and former reality TV star Ted Vernon, who had so far avoided conviction on all the charges…
Are Miami PD officers regularly riding around posing as fake Uber drivers, or was this a one-time sting? The department hasn’t responded to multiple calls from New Times about the undercover Uber. A spokesperson for Uber declined to comment but confirmed the company had no knowledge of this incident.
Seven years ago, filmmaker Tiller Russell was preparing to meet with the former Russian mobster at the center of Miami’s craziest true-crime caper of the ’90s. And he was hoping — or more like praying — a guard at a prison deep in a Panamanian jungle wouldn’t screw him over…
In a truly surprising sequence of events, it took less than one month from the massacre at a Parkland high school for Florida lawmakers to take actual legislative action. March 9, Gov. Rick Scott signed a bill allowing law enforcement to petition the courts to take guns away from people thought to be a danger to themselves or others. It was the first firearm restrictions supported by Florida Republicans in more than 20 years.
Audra West was visiting Fort Lauderdale from Texas in April 2014 when she was arrested at the bar the Elbo Room. Described in reports as “very intoxicated” and “belligerent,” she was charged with disorderly intoxication, trespassing, and resisting arrest.
In May 2016, Opa-locka Police Officer Dennis Horn was working an off-duty assignment with his pregnant girlfriend when another local cop pulled up. Horn’s girlfriend hopped in the other officer’s car and chatted for a bit — a simple conversation that left the “insecure” Horn so furious that he grabbed…
The Fort Lauderdale Police Department arrested Shamarly Emanuel Henry Sunday morning after they say the North Dakota resident knocked over a police officer with his Ford truck and then sped away. That altercation was not filmed. But cameras were rolling when FLPD cops arrested Henry, and a clip uploaded to…
Millions flocked to March for Our Lives events this weekend, including tens of thousands to events in South Florida. In Miami Beach, huge crowds waved signs and chanted for stricter gun control, while organizers promised that the fight had “just begun.” But as the push for gun reform gains steam…
James “Michael” Montgomery thought he was going to get hit when a Miami cop pulled in front of his scooter at a busy intersection and tried to make a left turn, despite a sign indicating left turns weren’t allowed. As traffic built up behind him at the green light, Montgomery frantically honked his horn and yelled, “No left turn!”
In January, the Florida Immigrant Coalition shared two videos of U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents storming onto Greyhound buses in the Sunshine State, where they asked passengers for their citizenship “papers” and hauled some away. In one case, agents removed a Jamaican grandmother, and in another they apprehended…
Barely a day after Florida International University’s pedestrian bridge collapsed and killed six people, Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle told multiple news stations she had already all but ruled out charging anyone with crimes over the deaths. She made that flabbergasting statement without even interviewing a single witness, while rescuers were still working to pull bodies from the rubble.
Cheryn Smilen seemed like someone who cared deeply about South Florida’s stray cat population. She helped the Cat Network with its sterilization efforts, fed cats for friends while they were out of town, and ran her own rescue where she listed dozens of cats available for adoption.
A bikini-clad dancer rides a white horse into the middle of a raucous nightclub crowd — until the animal suddenly bucks, throwing off its rider and stamping in a panic around the club. The cheering crowd is suddenly horrified, gasping as the clearly distressed horse tries to escape the noisy room.
As politicians like Marco Rubio and Rick Scott have shown no appetite to buck their NRA donors by banning assault rifles after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre last month, activists have turned the pressure on corporate America instead. It’s worked: Dick’s has stopped selling the weapons, and major firms such as Delta have ditched the NRA.
