Angry crowds have shouted for his ouster for weeks. Civic leaders have loudly decried his reign. His minions are accused of abusing the public with indiscriminate violence. And yet Miami PD chief Miguel Exposito keeps his tenuous grasp on power.Oh, you thought we were talking about that other guy? Nope,…
City of Miami police officers have shot and killed another suspect — the seventh killed by MPD cops since last summer. The latest shooting happened last night around 11 p.m. at North Miami Avenue and 75th Street, police sources tell Riptide, and left another man in critical condition.Police are declining…
Juan Carlos Rodriguez, the Miami-Dade police officer accused of fondling two teenage girls during a traffic stop, will have to rustle up a little less cash to head home for house arrest before his trial. A judge has reduced Rodriguez’s bond from $150,000 to $80,000…
We all know Florida takes its high school sports more seriously than, say, its budget — but a baseball coach in Orlando’s hard-nosed attitude has suddenly made him the national face of villainous athletic leadership (sorry Bobby Knight.) Coach Mike Bradley’s crime? Cutting Anthony Burruto, a double amputee with serious…
Thanks to the cackling eight-year-old child making poop jokes inside the minds of all Floridians, Riptide hit the mother lode last week. We made a Freedom of Information Act request for a list of all the objectionable personalized license plates reviewed by state officials in the last few years, and…
Once every six weeks or so, a small, sober group of bureaucrats and cops gathers in a conference room in Tallahassee. Members of the group synch their iPhones to urbandictionary.com, bone up on the latest texting slang, and then laugh their asses off for an hour or two. They’re the…
Picture this: Dozens of drug smugglers dance and drink outside a colonial-era farmhouse in a leafy countryside near Cali, Colombia. A salsa band provides the soundtrack for a bustling wedding party. “Mama always said, ‘Mouse and cheese are friends,’ ” go the lyrics, in Spanish. “Don’t trust anybody, because when…
I’d always believed the old wives’ tale that journalists get tossed out of jury pools quicker than Liz Lemon in Princess Leia drag, so I almost dropped my book when Judge Nushin Sayfie called my name on Monday. Along with five other lucky citizens, I’d been asked to sit in…
When Monroe County Sheriff’s deputies responded to an alarm at an appliance shop in Marathon late last night, they expected to find the usual: a burglary in progress or perhaps a malfunctioning security system. Instead, the cops say they walked in through an unlocked side door to find Kenneth White,…
Once every six weeks or so, a small, sober group of bureaucrats and cops gathers in a conference room in Tallahassee. Members of the group synch their iPhones to urbandictionary.com, bone up on the latest texting slang, and then laugh their asses off for an hour or two. They’re the…
When lawyers for Miami Voice — the group that organized a successful recall effort against County Commissioner Natacha Seijas — got her to sit down for a video deposition yesterday, they asked Herald reporter Matthew Haggman to come and watch. It’s not that unusual a move. Depositions aren’t open by…
Tell us if this sounds a tad familiar, Miami: A clean-cut, best-selling celebrity Catholic priest and author from South Florida gets caught in some monkey business with a lady and loses his job. Ahem, cough, Fathercutie!The difference this time is the offender isn’t a moderate padre like Cutie — it’s…
”Embattled” isn’t nearly a strong enough adjective for Miami Police jefe Miguel Exposito these days, so we’ll just have to invent a new one: em-blitzkrieged. Because it’s only Tuesday and Exposito’s job security this week looks as tenuous as Hosni Mubarak’s.Just since Friday, these things have happened: Another Miami cop…
Say this for Miami Police Chief Miguel Exposito: With his seat warming to volcanic temperatures over a rash of police shootings and City Hall spats, he’s not just sitting on his hands. He’s already locked in a half-nelson with Mayor Tomas Regalado (whom he reported to the FBI a couple…
There’s one hitch in Fidel Castro’s plan to lug the Cuban economy closer to capitalism by laying off 500,000 state workers so they can start private businesses: None of these people have ever paid taxes before.So how to teach a new generation of Cubans that government tithes come hand-in-hand with…
While asset-hiding Wall Street traders perch on their windowsills waiting for the latest from WikiLeaks — which plans to release more than 2,000 secret banking records of tax-cheats — founder Julian Assange has bigger fish to fry. No, not the Swedish sexual abuse charges that have left him on house…
When Robert Hammonds and a friend, Brent Bredwell, finished filming a DJ show at Jazid in South Beach, it was around 3 a.m. on a Sunday in September. A few minutes later, after they jumped into a car and headed down Washington Avenue, a drunk-looking driver swerved across traffic and…
Early this month, Suzanne Beard heard a crazy rumor from her neighbors in Quayside Towers: Someone had abandoned a grand piano in the middle of Biscayne Bay. So on January 8, Beard — an avid amateur photographer — headed for a nearby sandbar in a small boat with her husband…
If you’ve been withholding your support for Miami Beach Mayor Matti Herrera Bower for all these years because you suspect she doesn’t shoot nearly enough tequila and wavers in her commitment to fight aliens, don’t worry: There’s now a candidate for you.Steve Berke, a stand-up comedian and former reality show…
When a Miami Beach officer started loudly berating Robert Hammonds and his friends in September 2009, the aspiring filmmaker did what came naturally: He pulled out his videocamera and filmed it. Hammonds had no idea that that simple act would cast him into the middle of one of the hottest…
A year and half ago, the arranged marriage between über-architect Frank Gehry and South Beach was on the rocks. Gehry was halfway to divorce court after Miami Beach commissioners fired him from half the New World Symphony project, taking a parking garage and a park out of his hands to…
A horrible week for Florida’s police officers turned even worse this afternoon. While thousands gathered in downtown Miami to remember Roger Castillo and Amanda Haworth, the Miami-Dade veteran cops killed in Liberty City last week, two officers in St. Petersburg were gunned down in chillingly similar fashion.Just like Haworth and…
