Lew has received not only a promotion from deputy chief medical examiner to director of Miami-Dade’s Medical Examiner Department, but also an award and even a pay bump. In March 2017, the year Rundle decided not to press charges, Lew was given Miami-Dade’s In the Company of Women Award for being an “Outstanding Woman in Government.”
For years, Miami-based attorney Eric Waraftig helped bankroll a QVC marketing director’s lavish lifestyle by embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars and using inside information to make deals with competitors — all so he could pocket hundreds of thousands of dollars in kickbacks.
J.Y. and his mother, Barbara Yannucci, filed a class action complaint against Juul Labs, Inc. last week in Florida’s Southern District Court. Yannucci is suing the e-cigarette maker for fraud, unjust enrichment, failure to warn, and negligence. The case represents the latest in a string of lawsuits that have been filed against the San Francisco-based company in the past year, with consumers claiming the nicotine within Juul’s cigarettes is more potent and addictive than advertised.
A 26-year-old Miami woman was out enjoying the long Labor Day weekend last year in Wynwood when her evening took a nightmarish turn. She’d had too much to drink when she and a friend stepped outside El Patio. When 51-year-old Uber driver Fredrick Gaston offered her a ride, she was…
If you were on South Beach this past Monday afternoon, you might have noticed a yellow Corvette driving erratically down Fifth Street, darting onto a sidewalk near Flamingo Park, and then crashing into a fire hydrant near Fourth Street and Lenox Avenue — all while being chased by Miami Beach Police.
“The [City] Manager has informed me that the officer in question is in the process required by law and collective bargaining before an officer can be officially terminated,” Gilbert said in a written statement sent to New Times. “The behavior of which [Clarke] is accused, and the poor judgement which he has allegedly shown, is not consistent with the high standards to which we hold all City employees.”
Clarke has been investigated by MGPD’s internal affairs unit twice for having inappropriate relationships with women while on duty. The first complaint against him in 2016 was sustained and resulted in a five-day suspension, though that didn’t stop him from becoming a finalist for the 2017 Dade County “Officer of the Year” award this past May.
Yesterday, hours before Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Politico, the Miami Herald, and dozens of other news outlets published stories noting that another woman who accused the Supreme Court nominee of sexual transgressions — Julie Swetnick — had a black mark on her resumé. A Miami ex-boyfriend, Richard Vinneccy, filed a restraining order against her March 1, 2001.
Since signing on to the program, North Miami cops made 214 arrests of people with less than 20 grams of marijuana. The city is just the latest in Miami-Dade County to ignore a legislative push to arrest fewer people for weed possession, as well as a handful of other minor offenses covered by a 2015 county ordinance. Since the ordinance passed in June 2015, North Miami PD has made 549 arrests.
Miami is unique. No other major city on Earth is wedged between the ocean and an endangered river of grass. No other metropolis in the United States was founded by a woman. So it makes sense the Magic City’s criminals are also an unusual breed.
Miami-Dade’s weird-crime chronicles include a fellow huffing dust-cleaner at a Homestead bus stop and a man allegedly tinkering with the dead at Miami cemetery.
The rally, organized by South Florida LGBTQ groups SAVE, Equality Florida, and the Human Rights Campaign, was a stark contrast to the crowd Gillum drew in Wynwood just seven weeks ago, when a Miami artist unveiled a mural of Gillum outside 004 Connec on NW 24th Street.
The case of a 19-year-old allegedly assaulted by a Miami Police officer in some ways mirrors that of Christine Blasey Ford, the research psychologist who has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of attempted sexual assault.
At the end of July, the Florida Department of Transportation closed two westbound lanes on the MacArthur Causeway, kicking off a two-year, $12.9 million rehabilitation project on one of the two main links between Miami and Miami Beach. The repairs must take place, FDOT says, because the causeway is dangerously corroded, in large part as a result of years of salt spray from Jet Skis blasting the structure.
For the past ten years, Rhyelle, a 72-year-old Sarasota County resident, hasn’t been able to cast a ballot. He is one of the roughly 1.5 million Floridians who lost their right to vote because, in 2008, he was convicted of a felony for growing marijuana for his personal use in his home.
For about a year, homeless people in Miami Beach who didn’t want to sleep in the city’s shelters had another safe option: a lawn outside city hall. But that didn’t last long. After complaints, the city erected a fence a year and a half ago to keep the homeless out.
Chief Colina is going a step further than any other police department in Miami-Dade with his department’s citation program: he is removing officer discretion for the first two violations, meaning all officers must issue a citation the first and second time a person is caught committing any of the five ticketable misdemeanors.
On a hot summer evening aboard a cruise ship in Naples, Italy, Amy Tong began to feel ill. She told her husband, Jerry Ho, that she was having trouble breathing. He immediately contacted the ship’s medical office, but it was closed. Despite Ho’s attempts to get help for Tong, a scientist and academic, aboard the Royal Caribbean cruise ship, in just a few short hours, Tong died from congestive heart failure.
Seventeen months after the City of Miami signed an agreement allowing police officers to hand out civil citations instead of arresting people for certain minor misdemeanors — including possessing small amounts of marijuana — Miami Police Chief Jorge Colina says his officers will finally begin doing so by the end of this month.
Of the 10,078 total citations issued between July 1, 2015, and July 1, 2018, 72 percent — or 7,268 — were given to white people. Twenty-eight percent — or 2,789 — were given to black people.
BuzzFeed reporter Andrew Kimmel is suing Miami-Dade County for negligence, false imprisonment, and battery after police arrested him at Miami International Airport in October 2013.
In Florida, organizers say, 30 to 40 prisoners are on strike at Dade Correctional and 40 are refusing to work in Charlotte Correctional just north of Fort Meyers. Farther north, in the Panhandle, between 30 and 60 prisoners at Franklin Correctional are participating in the strike, while 70 inmates at Holmes Correctional have stopped working.
