VFW Hall 3559 is a bizarre relic of an earlier time in glitzy South Beach. Hidden inside the Floridian condo tower, patrons have to ring a bell at an unmarked side door and get buzzed in via hidden camera. Inside, sweeping views of Biscayne Bay contrast with a grimy, smoke-filled…
Proving complaints against police officers can be nearly impossible — a he-said, she-said situation putting cop versus suspect almost always ends in favor of the police. That’s one reason so many forces are now adopting body cameras. But Miami’s Civilian Investigative Panel, an independent city board that looks into complaints about…
In the grand scheme of violent crime in South Beach, an October 2014 drive-by shooting outside Ocean Drive’s Fat Tuesday outpost seemed far from notorious. In the wee hours of a Sunday morning, a group in an Altima fired at someone sitting in a dark-colored car and then sped away…
Miami Beach police have finalized their plans for controlling crowds and traffic on Memorial Day weekend, with one major change: This year, cars coming onto the Beach won’t be subject to a DUI checkpoint. Officer Ernesto Rodriguez, the department’s spokesman, said the checkpoint, which has been used for several years,…
On a Sunday afternoon one week before Easter 1999, Mark Williams pulled his SUV into the parking lot outside his estranged wife’s West Palm Beach apartment with his 11-year-old son Lamatra riding shotgun. For most of his life, Lamatra had shuffled between his mother and his grandmother, but this week…
Three years ago, a soft-spoken mobile app developer named Jesus Rodriguez was hailed as one of the up-and-coming bright lights of Miami’s emerging tech sector. Rodriguez’s company, Kidozen, was among the first local companies chosen by tech business incubator Endeavor Miami for a grant. Rodriguez quickly claimed runaway success. He…
“Opa-locka Hialeah is the place to go,” goes the familiar jingle. “It’s more than just a market, it’s a great big…” center of food stamp fraud, apparently. Multiple agencies raided the iconic Opa-locka Hialeah Flea Market this afternoon. 22 shop owners ended up being indicated, and some were hauled off in zip…
Jeffrey Jason Cooper lured Asian college students to Florida for the summer with the opportunity of doing clerical for his Miami Beach yoga studio. When they arrived, the students were informed that no such yoga studio actually existed. Instead, Cooper ran an erotic massage parlor and forced the students into performing…
It was 1 a.m. Saturday, January 16, when a pair of uniformed men shook Jaiema Pierre awake. The petite 18-year-old nursing major had fallen asleep in a friend’s dorm room at the Indian River Towers on Florida Atlantic University’s Boca Raton campus. “What year is it?” one of them asked…
Six months after the Supreme Court ruled that Florida’s previous death penalty sentencing law was unconstitutional, a Miami circuit court judge has ruled that the new law approved by the legislature and Governor Rick Scott is also unconstitutional. Eleventh District Circuit Judge Milton Hirsch struck the law down while considering the…
In a scandal that rocked Miami-Dade back in the ’90s, then County commissioner and chair of the county’s finance committee James “Jimmie” C. Burke was caught on tape accepting $5,000 in bribes. It was the downpayment on what was planned to be a $400,000 kickback in exchange for steering a…
At the end of April, a Miami man returned to his vehicle at the Dadeland North parking garage and found it propped up on concrete barriers and stripped of its wheels and tires. “All four wheels were taken and left on bricks,” Juan Bisbal wrote on Facebook. “The garages have surveillance cameras but…
Perhaps amongst the worst places to base your drug dealing business: a cop’s house. Even if that cop is your own father. Just ask Tyler Palmer. The 20-year-old son of a Miami-Dade Police Major was busted yesterday afternoon for dealing drugs out of the family home. The investigation was carried out…
Ex-Miami Dade mayor Carlos Alvarez, who was recalled from office in 2011 over the disastrous Marlins Stadium deal, has been arrested for domestic violence against his girlfriend of 14 years, according to an arrest affidavit from Coral Gables police. The affidavit says Alvarez’s girlfriend paid him a visit Saturday to…
Two months ago, Miami police union president Javier Ortiz rattled the Beyhive when he called for a boycott of Beyoncé’s upcoming concert at Marlins Park, the first stop on her 40-date Formation World Tour. Ortiz deemed the superstar’s message “anti-police” and suggested City of Miami officers protest by refusing to…
Kevin Gibson has just half a beard. He also had a full stash of marijuana with an intent to sell, police say. The combination of those two factors — plus the fact that Gibson spent the stoner holiday of 4/20 in jail for his alleged misdeeds — means that the…
If you hear a story about a woman seducing a man in South Florida only to make off with his Rolex, well, there’s a good chance that Subhanna Beyah was involved somehow. She’s been charged with several similar crimes in the past, but has managed to avoid jail time every…
Retired Miami-Dade Police Det. Greg Smith spent 31 years investigating some of Miami’s most brutal crimes, from drug-fueled shootouts to heartbreaking family disputes turned violent. But ask him which killing he can’t get out of his mind, and he’ll answer without a moment’s hesitation: the 1967 murder of Coral Gables…
Maybe you remember Miami-Dade County Judge Jacqueline Schwartz from previous headlines. She’s the judge who told a Coconut Grove convenience store clerk to “go fuck yourself” in a row involving an opponent’s campaign sign. She also once sent out an election victory e-mail boasting about being an “Anglo” who defeated…
In the midst of an already tense weekend on Miami Beach, David H. Johnson uploaded a video on Facebook informing friends that he had been robbed and was temporarily without a phone. His face was marred with stitches, contusions and scrapes, and the video soon spread outside of his friend…
Some thought she was behind a bizarre, eye-popping piece of performance art. Turned out she was actually carrying out an attempted second-degree murder. Siyuan Zhao, the woman who stabbed another woman with an x-acto knife in the middle of the Miami Beach Convention Center during the middle of December’s Art…
On a Friday in late March of 2012, an exasperated mother drove her teenage daughter to the Florida Keys Children’s Shelter in Tavernier, a residential program with room for up to 18 kids on the island of Key Largo. By all accounts, it was a difficult ride. Twice, the girl…
