Police & Law Enforcement

Besiki Luka Kutateladze couldn’t believe the statistics: Between 2015 and 2016, the Miami-Dade Police Department — the country’s eighth-largest force — reported just one hate crime. Kutateladze’s interest in the numbers was both professional and personal. For years, he has led research on criminal justice issues. But he and his husband were considering moving from New York to Miami, and just months removed from the Pulse shootings, they wanted to know that they and their four young children would be accepted.

Despite his laundry list of complaints and lawsuits from civilians, City of Miami Police union vice president Javier Ortiz received a big promotion at the department in October, getting a bump from lieutenant to captain.

Miami Beach Commissioner Kristen Rosen Gonzalez, who is running for U.S. Congress, sent the Miami Beach Police chief a flurry emails demanding a major donor to her campaign not be arrested for an alleged spree of machete destruction, according to text messages and emails New Times obtained this week.

In the early-morning hours of December 7, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in Louisiana woke up 92 Somali detainees and shackled them by their wrists, waists, and ankles. The Somalis were then loaded onto a chartered airplane that was supposed to return them to Somalia. But then, for reasons the government has not yet explained, the plane landed in Dakar, Senegal. It sat on the ground for 23 hours and then headed back to the United States, landing in Miami.

From long-lost cocaine lords found hiding in Orlando to steroid-slinging gym owners to a truly Satanic plot to robocall millions of phones with spam messages, 2017 ended up as a 1. FCC Fines Miami Man $120 Million for Making 96 Million Robocalls in Three Months Yesterday the Federal Communications Commission…

Last week, a Georgia inmate sued Florida Department of Corrections officials for permanently damaging his stomach and intestines. For about a month during the summer of 2016, Peach State native Marc Caesar worked at a car wash in Doral as part of a work-release program.

Pascual Diaz-Plasencia was arrested on misdemeanor drug possession charges June 29, 2012, after police caught him with less than 20 grams of marijuana. Diaz-Plasencia had recently undergone a kidney transplant and had to take a set of pills twice daily to ensure his body didn’t reject the organ.

This past July, a group of young Florida bros filmed themselves dragging a live shark behind a boat until the poor thing disintegrated into a bloody pulp. The crew of numbskulls then sent the clip to Miami’s infamous shark hunter, Mark “the Shark” Quartiano, because they thought the famed fisherman would find the footage entertaining.

The North Miami Police Department’s interim chief, Larry Juriga, claimed in a lawsuit two years ago that the police department “discriminated” against him for being a “white redneck.” As ridiculous as that claim might be, it seems another NMPD officer (and reported friend of Juriga’s) is so incensed about racial diversity…

Comedian Hannibal Buress has made Wynwood something of a second home in recent years, regularly showing up for surprise shows at Gramps when he’s not filming Broad City or the Eric Andre Show. It’s not clear exactly what he was doing in Miami last night, but a cell phone video…

It wasn’t just media hype: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents really did ramp up their enforcement efforts during Donald Trump’s first year in office. According to year-end figures ICE released yesterday, the agency arrested 6,192 immigrants in Florida, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands this year — a 75 percent jump from last year, in which only 3,524 people were apprehended.

Miami-Dade is a gigantic county, larger than Rhode Island, packed with two million people and perpetually understaffed and overworked regulators. All of which is to say, you/ can get away with a lot of crazy stuff on a remote piece of land: cockfighting rings, grow-house empires, illegal horse slaughterhouses. Even…

The Miami-Dade County Commission must sign off on any grants or funding requests county police ask for. But at today’s commission meeting, elected officials will be asked to retroactively approve a $450,000 Department of Justice grant that MDPD oddly already applied for. Even more…

Today, a group of pro-immigration protesters gathered outside the building housing the offices of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Miami Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart to demand protection for Dreamers, who were brought undocumented to the U.S. as children. Local police quickly began harassing their small group of activists, seven of whom,…

Last Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard a case about whether cops are allowed to access cell-phone location data without a warrant — the latest in a growing legal battle over the limits of police surveillance using new technology.

On Velocity’s South Beach Classics, reality TV star Ted Vernon was known for his short temper and sharp tongue. But behind the scenes, employees and relatives of the Miami-based classic car dealer say he was actually straight-up abusive. In March, a Broward County judge issued a permanent restraining order to keep Vernon away from his estranged wife, who says he routinely beat her.

In December 2012, a Massage Envy employee touched a Coral Springs woman’s vagina while she was getting a routine massage, she says. But when she filed a lawsuit in 2013, the company’s lawyers blamed her for the sexual assault, insisting it was she who behaved negligently.

At 3:30 a.m. on Monday, May 28, 2012, Miami-Dade County Police Officer Luis Perez drove his squad car through the Hammocks District of Miami-Dade County on a hot and humid morning. He passed a teenager, later identified as 16-year-old Sebastian Gregory, wearing a baggy black sweater, black pants, beanie cap,…

One look, and Ken Fusco knew his son was gone. Lying on his childhood bed in dark-washed jeans and a Western-style belt, the garrulous 24-year-old almost looked asleep. But Jason’s skin was ashen, and he wasn’t breathing. Ken’s older son, Michael, carefully moved Jason to the floor and began CPR…