On Instagram, Richard Rodriguez comes across as a high-living gym fanatic, posing with top bodybuilding athletes and posting photos of luxury sports cars and his extreme adventures, such as skydiving and firing high-powered weapons. As owner of the popular Iron Addicts gym just north of downtown Miami, he had recently become a…
On a cold February day in 2013, Warren Papove deplaned in Vancouver with 65 cents to his name. After living in South Miami for ten years without committing a crime, Papove — a homeless handyman who did odd jobs for Commissioner Bob Welsh — had been reported to immigration officials and rounded up by ICE. Six months into his lockup at the Krome Detention Center, Papove was deported to his native Canada in the middle of winter without so much as a jacket to keep himself warm.
Shooting a suspect is one of the most serious actions a police officer can take. We entrust cops to walk around town with guns to protect people, but when they have to use them, we also expect a full, clear explanation of what happened and why they felt compelled to take potentially deadly action.
For once in Miami-Dade County, a police officer caught doing something blatantly racist won’t be getting his job back. Former Miami Beach Police Lt. Alex Carulo was fired alongside one other high-ranking cop in 2015 for sending hundreds of racist, sexist emails. The slew of garbage included images of a “Black Monopoly” board where every space sent the player to jail…
Most burglars wouldn’t bother cutting the lawn. But on an April day in 2014, that’s exactly what raised the suspicions of a woman in one Miami neighborhood. When she saw a strange man cutting the grass outside a home on SW Fourth Street, she called the homeowner to let him know.
Cops are supposed to give other cops “professional courtesy” when they’re out in public. That means they’re not supposed to arrest or ticket one another when they’re caught breaking the law. But after Donna “Jane” Watts, a Florida Highway Patrol officer, caught Fausto Lopez, a City of Miami cop, rocketing up the highway at 120 mph, she pulled him over — at gunpoint.
Miami Beach Police want to install controversial license-plate readers permanently on the city’s causeways. But it’s difficult to imagine how the department’s plate-reading dragnet could possibly get bigger: According to data New Times obtained from MBPD, the department sucked up data from at least 11,388,106 license plates in the past year.
This morning in a courtroom in Tallahassee, the seven justices of the state’s Supreme Court will hear a case that should be of interest to any Floridian concerned about bad cops. At stake is the question of whether citizens have the right to investigate police or whether we should trust…
In 2014, the brother of Marlon Woodstock, a resident of Sunrise in Broward County, called to warn police that the 38-year-old was off his medication and possibly a danger to himself. Sunrise Police responded by tasering Woodstock, attacking him with a dog, and then shooting him dead.
Apparently, every large gathering in Miami Beach is now an excuse to attack citizens’ privacy rights. In recent years, Miami Beach Police have cracked down hard on Memorial Day revelers, including with license-plate readers, which groups including the American Civil Liberties Union say pose a risk to the privacy of innocent people.
In 2007, then-Miami Beach Police Capt. Richard Weissman stood inside a Miami Beach hotel room, preparing his fellow officers for a prostitution sting. According to a later Miami Herald report, Weissman began tossing heated questions at the other cops, including “What if a prostitute comes in and tries to rob one of you guys?” and “What if when the prostitute enters the room, she locks the door?”
Two years ago, amid a spike in crime on South Beach’s iconic Ocean Drive, the city assigned eight police officers to patrol the street from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. Wednesday through Saturday. The city says the Ocean Drive Squad is “the centerpiece of the department’s efforts to address crime and other challenges facing Ocean Drive.”
There’s plenty of argument raging online about how to best honor Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy, especially when MLK Day falls just before the inauguration of walking racist meme Donald Trump. But there’s no doubt that mass violence is the worst possible way to remember the civil rights icon. So…
When Charles Kinsey, an unarmed behavioral technician assisting an autistic client, was shot by a North Miami Police officer last summer, critics immediately assailed the department’s training procedures. Those cries only intensified when news broke that North Miami had recently lost its state accreditation in part due to problems with training its cops.
As far as bank robberies go, a holdup at Brickell’s Navy Federal Credit Union yesterday afternoon was remarkably chill. A bald man in a neat sports coat calmly told a teller he had a bomb and then watched her fill a pink envelop with cash. Then, as his Uber driver streamed…
On a sweltering September morning last year, Adrian Henriquez and five friends hopped onto a yacht he’d chartered and set out for an afternoon cruise on Biscayne Bay. The group planned to shoot footage for an upcoming music video. Shortly after the luxury yacht left the Miami Beach Marina, one of the six passengers began smoking a cigar. But the seemingly innocuous display sent their captain, Robert Nobles, into a rage. That’s when, the passengers say, Nobles “became agitated, belligerent, and aggressive.”
In addition to tearing apart communities and undermining public respect for cops, police brutality is really effing expensive. When an officer punches someone who doesn’t deserve it, taxpayers can be on the hook for hundreds of thousands of dollars in settlements and legal fees.
Esteban Santiago has been identified as the shooter who opened fire at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, according to NBC News.
The West Perrine community where Jamar Rollins lived is still reeling from his December 30 shooting death at the hands of Miami-Dade County Police officers. Though MDPD says Rollins pointed a gun at cops before he was shot last month, eyewitnesses contend that Rollins’ hands were raised and that he did not own a gun. (A gun was recovered from the scene, police say.)
On a hot summer day in June 1966, Norman Wade was shopping in the Russ Supermarket in Pompano Beach when the store’s owner reached out and slapped him. Wade, who’s black, was 10 years old. The store owner was white. Racial change was in the air; two years earlier, the…
Last week, everyone from city officials to Pitbull himself barraged Miamians with a simple plea: Try to celebrate the new year without firing your handguns like Yosemite Sam. It’s not clear how many people watched Pibtull’s “One Bullet Kills the Party” promo and decided not to fete the new year with live ammunition. But as 2017’s first workweek dawns in South Florida, this much is clear: Gun violence didn’t take a break for the holiday weekend.
At Hialeah Gardens High School, Javier Cuenca was a popular assistant basketball coach — until four students told authorities he’d molested them and in some cases given them steroids. Now two of those former students have filed lawsuits against their former coach, further detailing their claims that he molested them in the summer of 2013.
