The Miami Beach Police Department’s basic mission statement tells officers to conduct themselves with “honor, courage, integrity.” The slogan is routinely plastered on official city and department documents. But when Lori Freedline, a civilian employee at MBPD, hung signs in her office that encouraged employees to act with “integrity” and to beware of “karma,” her boss wasn’t happy.
After the Freddie Gray riots in 2015, Baltimore residents began noticing small planes circling the city. As reporters later uncovered, Baltimore Police had quietly employed a “wide-area surveillance” system, which uses Cessna planes to constantly record the movements of an entire city. Police never bothered to tell the public they was using the invasive technology…
The shots rang out before either cop could reach for his holster. The only thing the two Broward Sheriff’s deputies could do was call for help. “We’re shot!” came a voice over police radio. Then it was quiet. When the bullets stopped flying that November night, Dep. Corey Carbocci lay…
In June 2009, Miami Beach Police Officer Adam Tavss fatally shot two people in four days. Tavss resigned the next year after testing positive for marijuana and was later caught running a marijuana growhouse. In 2011, he was cleared of wrongdoing in the shooting of the first victim, an unarmed tourist named Husein Shehada.
This Memorial Day weekend was a test for Miami Beach. For the first time, the city scheduled a massive air show during the unofficial Urban Beach Week, with the not-so-secret goal of ending the gathering that draws thousands of mostly black hip-hop fans to South Beach. Could the two coexist?
Last November, Miami resident Mario Javier Cordoba sued the City of Miami and two of its cops, Reynaldo Irias and Yesid Ortiz, for false arrest, battery, and civil-rights violations. Cordoba says the two MPD officers chucked him in the back of a cop car just for trying to record his…
This past March 23, singer Alicia Keys headlined the grand-opening party for the Porsche Design Tower, an ultraluxury condominium complex in Sunny Isles Beach built by father-and-son Miami developers (and former Trump business partners) Michael and Gil Dezer. The event was a spectacular display of wealth at the Porsche Tower, a massive steel-gray building filled with spartan German decor, billionaire investors, and elevators that lift whole cars right into residents’ condo units.
For the past year, Brandon Russell has saluted the flag and worn the uniform of the Florida National Guard while serving his country as a private first class. But in his suburban Tampa apartment, Russell and his three roommates pledged allegiance to a whole different ideal. Russell’s bedroom was decorated with neo-Nazi and white supremacist propaganda and a framed photo of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. His garage was full of guns, ammo, and high-powered materials for bomb-making.
Miami’s police union president, Lt. Javier Ortiz, notoriously said he had “no regrets” after posting a woman’s photos and contact information online and encouraging his Facebook followers to harass her. But when the case came before the city’s independent police oversight board this March, almost everyone agreed his actions reflected poorly on the police department.
The Coral Gables Police Department, which patrols one of the safest, richest parts of Miami-Dade County, inexplicably has two military-grade, tank-like armored trucks called Mine-Resistant, Ambush-Protected trucks (MRAPS). The department got the truck from the U.S. Department of Defense, which outfits local cops with military-grade equipment for free, so long…
Records show that everyone in Vernon’s immediate family, from Ziel to his first wife to all three of his children, have accused him of domestic violence.
Sportswriters are wringing their hands and moralizing over Robby Anderson, a New York Jets wide receiver who was arrested Sunday night at the Rolling Loud hip-hop festival. Anderson, 23, was booked on charges of resisting an officer with violence and obstruction; an arrest report New Times obtained claims…
On November 2, 2016, the Professional Law Enforcement Association, a police union, requested Miami-Dade County Police airport cop Mark Allen’s body-camera footage from the week of September 7 that year. According to MDPD bylaws, the department must preserve nonevidentiary footage for a minimum of 90 days — the union requested copies of Allen’s footage in less than 60.
Charlise Stallworth was driving in Broward County when a City of Miami Police car driven by Sgt. Earnest Lawrence pulled in front of her, activated its emergency lights, and stopped suddenly. Stallworth, driving with her teenage daughter, slammed on the brakes and changed lanes.
Mention Bal Harbour to a random Miamian, and two things come to mind: an über-luxury shopping mall and one of the most notorious speed traps on A1A. Violent drug-related shootings would certainly not appear on that list.
In December 2014, Danielle Venezia says, she was sitting in the passenger’s seat of a friend’s car on SW 63rd Court in South Miami when her fiancé walked up, ripped open the door, and yanked her out of the car. Venezia says he then began “shoving her around.”
In March 2015, Zachary Bailey, a state probation officer, was arrested after an anonymous Coral Springs woman accused him of rape.
When the Miami-Dade Police Department acquired two $50,000 drones back in 2009, it was big news. The agency was the first in the nation to get a permit from the FAA to fly the devices, which looked a lot like flying garbage cans.
Florida’s gun control debates tend to go like this: NRA-backed GOP politicians propose rules to allow more guns in more places and to decrease accountability for how those guns are used.
Food Not Bombs, the food-sharing organization dedicated to helping the homeless, impoverished, and needy, has long claimed that South Florida police keep tabs on their organization and occasionally harass people stopping by to get food. But the group’s activists say they were particularly stunned yesterday, when a U.S. Customs and…
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.
