Internationally known for its historic architecture, sultry beaches, and bumping nightclubs, South Beach has always had another claim to fame: its scandals. From the days of Prohibition to the era of the Cocaine Cowboys to the gruesome murder of Gianni Versace, the city has been plagued by crime and corruption since its earliest years.
If there are two things Floridians are fantastic at, it’s wrestling alligators and racketeering. This week, New Times chronicled one group of particularly enterprising Sunshine State residents who combined the two: an alligator-thieving ring that took the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission two years of undercover tracking to nab.
When a North Miami church worker was found guilty of molesting a 9-year-old girl who was attending a youth program, he was sentenced to ten years in prison and registered as a sexual predator. But now the victim’s family says the church, Horeb French Seventh-Day Adventist, should be held responsible,…
The last time O.J. Simpson lived in Miami, he allegedly spiraled into drug addiction, had the FBI raid his house, and by most accounts allowed the city’s worst impulses to totally consume him. According to the recent documentary O.J.: Made in America, the football star-turned-accused murderer sank deep…
Andrea Landa and two friends were sitting in her parked car one Sunday night when a trio of young police officers walked up with flashlights. The cops checked the friends’ IDs, but wouldn’t let them leave. Instead, over the next two hours, the officers toyed with their guns, told one of…
In February, the Miami-Dade County Commission made a Faustian bargain: The county said it would start holding undocumented people in jail for the feds, all to shed its label as a “sanctuary” community and avoid President Donald Trump’s scorn. Given that some 156,000 undocumented people live in Miami, this terrified…
Caked in mud, the black Chevy pickup made a careful left turn from the main highway onto a dirt driveway in rural Southwest Florida. Four young men in jeans and scuffed-up cowboy boots hopped out to meet their new business partner, a lanky, middle-aged Hawaiian guy named Curtis Blackledge. After…
Gentry Lane is used to getting insulting messages from strangers. That comes with the territory when you run an activist organization like her Rebel Action Network. But one recent message she got was particularly unhinged — and when she clicked on the sender’s profile, she was shocked to see that…
After a Homestead cop tried to run him off the road, Eric McDonough started keeping tabs on the local police. The Homestead resident, who has a doctorate in organic thermochemistry, started filming cops, criticizing the department at public meetings, and demanding the city institute a body-camera program. As a thank-you, McDonough…
While supposedly transferring data to a customer’s new iPhone one day, an employee at a Kendall T-Mobile store decided to go on a little fishing expedition through her photos and videos. When he found some that piqued his interest — nudes and videos of the woman having sex — he took the liberty of sending them to himself and then forwarded them to a few friends.
Since the 1990s, police departments across the nation have reevaluated when to chase suspects. If someone flees, cops’ first instinct is to follow; thousands of TV episodes, back to Miami Vice and Starsky and Hutch, have trained the public that a cop’s number one job is to chase down perpetrators, with no apparent concern for public property or consequences.
This week, New Times took a deep dive into what authorities allege to have been a huge “purple drank” ring that supplied codeine-and-promethazine laced cough syrup (A.K.A. “liquid heroin”) to hip-hop stars including Chris Brown and Lil Wayne. Harrison Garcia, the group’s alleged ringleader, was arrested earlier this year, and…
David McCue was off-duty when he got the call that iconic fashion designer Gianni Versace had been shot in cold blood on the steps of his Ocean Drive mansion July 24, 1997. At first, the Miami Beach detective thought it must be a mob hit. But when he learned of the prime suspect, he cringed — he recognized the name.
The case of former City of Miami Police Officers Reynaldo Irias and Yesid Ortiz remains strange: Both are being sued for allegedly falsely arresting and injuring an ex-Marine because the veteran tried to record the two cops harassing him. In a move that made matters much more interesting, both officers also resigned earlier this year, on the same day, by turning in identical resignation letters.
High above a leafy Westchester neighborhood, a helicopter full of federal agents zeroes in on a gated house with a red-tiled roof. On the ground, a Homeland Security SWAT team surrounds the ranch-style home on a dead-end street off the Palmetto Expressway. Scores of agents in body armor crouch nearby,…
One day in spring 2013, a 15-year-old girl didn’t show up for classes at Miami Jackson Senior High. Her parents sought help from someone who seemed trustworthy: a police officer named Juan Cecchinelli who worked at the school. The next day, the teen returned home and confided in Cecchinelli that she’d been sexually assaulted after running away.
Well, 2017 is officially halfway over — and when it comes to crime news, Miami always crams more insanity into six months than most cities do in a year. This year has been no different: We’ve been subjected to a handful of criminal plots that could each form the basis of a true-crime Netflix series.
Across the nation, voters have asked for civilian-led police advisory panels, which review complaints about police separately from departments themselves. There’s a simple reason: Internal affairs officers often act to shield problem cops from discipline, while civilian-led panels can act independently to weed out bad cops.
Last summer, the Broward Sheriff’s deputy who’d killed Jermaine McBean — a computer tech who was carrying an unloaded air rifle — tried something that had never been done before in Florida: He asked for a Stand Your Ground hearing. The bet paid off. In late July, a Broward circuit judge dismissed the manslaughter charge, leading to protests and pushback.
Two men casually wandered through Dolphin Mall earlier this month, past the teenage shoppers and kiosks hawking watches, and headed for a quiet bathroom. One man gripped an envelope stuffed with $10,000 in cash. The other waited for a handoff in a stall. And lurking in disguise nearby, federal agents watched it all go down.
While the Brewers walloped the Marlins on a steamy June evening, a Miami Police officer working crowd control outside the team’s Little Havana stadium pulled over a speeding silver Pontiac. The cop soon realized that the driver, 32-year-old Emmanuel Reyes, was wanted for previous traffic offenses.
Late last year, as he served a life sentence in prison, Ernesto Behrens received a notice informing him of problems discovered at the crime lab that had examined DNA in his case. Behrens, who was convicted of armed sexual battery in Broward County in 2000, immediately filed a flurry of motions asking for the evidence to be reviewed.
