12,000 people — about one in eight inmates — are currently being held in solitary confinement in Florida state prisons according to the American Civil Liberties Union. The organization, along with a coalition of civil rights organizations, faith leaders and advocates for the mentally ill, is now calling on the U.S…
David Rivera is the absolute last name Marco Rubio wanted to see in headlines four days before the biggest election of his life. Because whenever the former U.S. representative and longtime Rubio buddy makes the news, it’s for increasingly sordid allegations and federal investigations. Today is no different. Rivera is…
Trevor Darling and Jahair Jones, two offensive lineman for the University of Miami Hurricanes, found themselves behind bars last night for the dumbest reason. The pair were basically standing in the middle of the road, and were arrested after refusing orders by police to get out of the road several…
It’s finally official. Cameras are coming to the bodies of Miami-Dade’s cops. Three-and-a-half years after the idea was initially proposed, the Miami-Dade County Commission has voted to approve a program to equip county officers with body cameras. “With today’s approval, approximately 1,000 Miami-Dade police officers will be equipped with body-worn…
Herb Smith, a lanky 23-year-old, drove a slick crimson Audi through the streets of Fort Lauderdale while a friend rode shotgun. At 4 p.m. last October 7, they caught a red light. A Broward County Sheriff’s patrol car stopped beside them at the intersection. When the officer glanced over, he…
As New Times reported last week, Carlos Gutierrez – the only candidate who has filed to run for sheriff in Collier County in the upcoming November election – was fired from Key Biscayne’s police force for repeatedly falling asleep in his cruiser in 2007. But it turns out that’s not…
The night of May 3, 2014, in the capital of Trinidad and Tobago, federal prosecutor Dana Seetahal sat before a slot machine. Gambling was her favorite form of relaxation and one of her only hobbies. Her law enforcement career had left her little time for much else, and the brainless…
In early 2007, a self-identified “disappointed but hopeful resident” of Key Biscayne typed out a letter to the police chief about something they found appalling. The resident had noticed a cop car in front of the ritzy, members-only Grand Bay Club and was happy to see the police department patrolling the…
For Brandon “Mighty Mouse” Desrosier, boxing was a redemption. After a rough childhood in West Palm Beach spent bouncing in and out of youth detention facilities, a turning point came when a police officer gave him a choice: Either go back to jail for his latest street fight, or start…
Earlier this month, Miami Police union chief Javier Ortiz used his Facebook account to post the cell phone number of a woman who had filmed an officer speeding. He urged his followers to call her. Now, in response, a group identifying itself as part of the hacking collective Anonymous has posted Ortiz’s personal information through social media, a practice known as doxxing.
Thanks to Scarface, Miami Vice and Rakontur, everyone knows that 1980s Miami was the world capital of illegal substances. But few realize that sixty years before the Cocaine Cowboys, another brand of underworld smugglers had already turned South Florida into the Wild West. At the height of Prohibition, Dade County…
Some boxers enter the ring scowling dead-eyed at their opponents. But Stan Stanisclasse could never pull it off. His smile came too easily — it’d just creep unbidden across his face. So he began most bouts with a little dance instead, stomping and sliding his feet back and forth in…
King Carter was six years old. He played Pop Warner football for the 75-pound Junior Bandits and had a smile that lit up his neighborhood. This weekend, he became the latest shockingly young kid killed in Miami by gun violence. The young victim has now become the latest rallying cry…
Cuba is one of the richest pipelines on earth for world-class baseball talent. It’s also one of the most treacherous places for Major League Baseball teams to recruit. Thanks to the embargo, defectors have to risk perilous journeys across the Gulf and through Latin America before they can snag big-money…
Fifteen-year-old Federico Tamborrel was learning to drive on the Turnpike last January with his dad riding shotgun when he swerved to avoid another car. That’s when he saw what every student driver dreads most: Flashing blue-and-red lights in his mirror. But the traffic stop soon turned into a whole different…
Martin Gottesfeld’s hands apparently weren’t as nimble with the jib and spinnaker of a sailboat as they were with his keyboard. The 31-year-old is suspected to be behind a high-profile hacking attack against a Massachusetts medical center and apparently had tried to flee. He and his wife were traveling in…
Just after midnight yesterday, 911 dispatchers in the Florida Keys received a barrage of odd calls: A backhoe, witnesses said, was wildly flinging boulders across the Seven Mile Bridge and into the water. Thus began America’s strangest police chase of the year. Over the next three hours, a small army…
O.J.-mania is once again gripping America this month thanks to “The People vs. OJ Simpson,” a new FX series dramatizing the sordid trial that gripped the nation in the mid-90s. But it was fifty years ago this year when Miami that found itself in the center of one of America’s…
Last night two children reported to security officers at the Flamingo condominium building in South Beach that their mother had been assaulted in her unit. When police showed up they found the 31-year-old woman dead. Police identified Samir Jemaaoui as the main suspect, and CBS Miami reports that the victim was his…
Major League Baseball player Delmon Young found himself behind bars and accused of battery this weekend after threatening to kill a valet at the Viceroy hotel in Brickell over the weekend. Young reportedly unleashed a tirade full of ethnic insults at the valet before leaving. Police eventually found him at his…
Anchelin Gonzalez was just 17 when she left the Bronx and moved to Palm Beach to give birth to her son back in 2005. She was “leading a fast and dangerous life” in New York, she says, but relocated to live with her uncle in a sunnier side of the…
Derek Medina was sentenced to life in prison for the grisly 2013 murder of his wife Jennifer Alonso. The case made headlines after Medina posted a picture of Alonso’s lifeless murder on Facebook with the caption, “I’m going to prison or death sentence for killing my wife.” Though Medina correctly predicted his…
