Had Miami Beach Police fired a rifle at 51-year-old David W. Winesett in December 2016, he might have survived. Last December, police say Winesett escaped a halfway house, robbed a bank, and allegedly waved a razor blade at police before they fired their guns directly into his chest in broad daylight…
As the gospel choir finished the last chords of “Going Up Yonder,” Deborah Frazier approached her brother’s powder-blue coffin. It was surrounded by heaping bouquets of baby’s breath and blue roses. For a moment, the cavernous sanctuary of the Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church was silent except the sound of her…
Last week, Miami-Dade County Police Director Juan Perez announced in a press conference that the department will spend $2.6 million over the next five years, and possibly another $3 million in the following five, on ShotSpotter, a police technology that uses microphones to listen for gunshots. Perez did not mention…
Miami-Dade County set its annual budget late Thursday night. According to the Miami Herald’s Doug Hanks, County Commissioners argued over whether it was worth spending $100,000 to revive the county’s Civilian Investigative Panel, which employs non-police civilians to investigate complaints against police. Many law-enforcement scholars agree civilian-led panels provide an…
Miami police can’t stop people from firing celebratory gunshots on holidays like New Year’s Eve and July 4. This past Independence Day, someone made the moronic decision to fire his or her gun in the middle of the tourist-heavy Bayside Marketplace downtown. Apparently, current Denver Broncos linebacker Brandon Marshall (not the…
In 2014, New Times reported that Miami-Dade County Police abandoned using ShotSpotter, a controversial police technology that uses microphones to listen for gunshot noises, after realizing it didn’t work very well. ShotSpotter’s “success in directly leading to the apprehension of individuals involved in shooting incidents [was] minimal,” MDPD told New Times that…
Terence Crutcher, a 40-year-old, black father of four, was killed by police in Tulsa, Oklahoma on Friday. He was shot to death, on video, after walking peacefully with his hands raised away from three cops. Crutcher, a Christian who regularly sang in church, had stopped his SUV in the middle…
When Andrew Mossberg, then 50, stumbled upon what he says was a man beating up a woman in Miami Beach in 2013, Mossberg immediately assumed the man was a thieving bandit. So Mossberg stepped in to help. It turned out the man harassing the woman, Phillipe Archer, was actually an…
Two years ago, Miami-Dade County closed the ninth floor of its Pretrial Detention Center, which held mentally ill inmates awaiting trial in putrid, dangerous, and obscene conditions. For years, CBS4 had dubbed the ward the “Forgotten Floor,”and the U.S. Department of Justice called the conditions there unconstitutional. But although the county is…
On Wednesday, New Times reported that the city of Coral Gables, which obtained two mine-resistant, ambush-protected armored military trucks (MRAPs) from the U.S. Department of Defense, was “graciously” donating one of the tank-like vehicles to Miami Beach. That city said it needed the truck to drive through flooded areas and protect…
In the two years since the Ferguson riots, local police departments have come under fire for buying needless military equipment and using it to crack down on peaceful protesters. Departments, including many in Miami-Dade County, have been lambasted for wasting tax dollars on surplus grenade launchers, anti-aircraft weapons, and armored…
In the dim light of South Florida’s most famous gay hangout, two dozen men curl around the center bar to down two-for-one drinks on a Monday evening. Some are balding with graying hair. More rugged gents sport baseball caps. A few clean-shaven yuppies in suits scroll through social media feeds…
The City of Miami Police Athletic League runs a youth football camp to help teach Miami kids the values of working hard, competing fairly, and treating people with respect. But two men claim Miami cop Stanley Jean-Poix took some time out of football practice to demonstrate a different lesson in…
Beer theft is a pretty great racket. You steal beer and then you drink it. It’s simple, it works, and even if you go to jail, your fellow inmates will probably treat you like a hero. Miami’s most feared cerveza crook saw his reign of terror end today, though. Because…
A couple after the Miami Heat won its second-straight NBA championship title in 2013, Francois Alexandre was partying in the streets alongside hundreds of other blissed out fans. Late into the night, as the crowd thinned to about 20 people, Alexandre says a group of City of Miami bicycle cops…
Facebook friend requests from strangers almost always turn out to be bad news. In the best-case scenario, some weird guy from Turkmenistan insults your sister’s prom photos. In the worst-case: Someone creates a fake account, discovers hidden info about your past, and then threatens to release that information or kill you…
In Miami-Dade County, cities can’t spend money on public transportation, affordable housing, or sea-level rise preparedness without local residents stomping their feet and flooding city commission meetings to protest. But ask for six figures worth of controversial, military-grade police equipment, and South Florida cities will pretty much just hand you a…
Ayinde Crespo says that in 2012, he had a hell of a time convincing anyone that a Miami cop named Marcel Jackson had attacked him outside a strip club. The way Crespo tells it, Jackson tackled him from behind, slammed his face into the ground, and beat him. Even after…
The call came in to Miami Beach police early on a Monday morning two years ago: An MBPD sergeant, the witness said, had gotten hammered while working off-duty at Mango’s Tropical Cafe on Ocean Drive. Police arrived to find Sgt. Mike Muley in such bad shape he had to be…
A few years ago, Tomas Kennedy, an immigration and civil-rights activist, spent some time working as an aide at County Hall. In all that time, Kennedy says, he’d never seen a security officer brandishing a semi-automatic gun for any reason. So Kennedy says his jaw dropped when he showed up…
When Martin County police arrived Monday to find 19-year-old Austin Harrouff standing over the bodies of two bleeding victims, violently biting at man’s face, police first fired stun-guns. When those didn’t work, cops then unleashed a dog. When that didn’t work, three officers pulled Harrouff off the man and brought him…
Back in 2011, Jesse Campodonico, a 27-year-old fitness trainer from New York, was thrown to the ground and Tasered by police at Ultra Music Fest. Campodonico later filed a lawsuit for police brutality against the city and the festival and ultimately Ultra paid $400,000 to settle the case. Naturally, festival organizers weren’t…
