Miami News Blog

Miami Beach Police Chief Carlos Noriega met with gay leaders earlier this afternoon at city hall, promising changes one week after the ACLU announced a suit charging that Beach cops regularly harass gay men in Flamingo Park.

​Noriega stressed that the two officers at the center of the ACLU suit have been placed on desk duty. Noriega says he doesn't believe their case is indicitive of a larger problem.

"With the exception of the case that re-emerged last week, I have not had an incident like this cross my desk in three years," he told the meeting of the LGBT business outreach committee. "I didn't see this coming or realize this was a problem [with the gay community]."

The ACLU suit, which you can read more about here, is on behalf of a former Beach resident named Harold Strickland, who was arrested after calling 911 to report that cops were beating up another gay man near Flamingo Park.

Some members of the committee were skeptical of Noriega's assertion that Strickland's case wasn't indicitave of a larger problem in the MBPD.

Chip Arndt, a committee member, read from a blog post by a traveler who said he was arrested and harassed after sitting on the beach with his boyfriend. Other committee members mentioned that their friends and neighbors had similar problems.

​Most Senate primary debates are lucky to get aired on local channels, but the race for the GOP nomination for Florida's Senate seat is so hot it might end up broadcast nationally on Fox News.

According to the Chicago Tribune's Swamp Politics, Marco Rubio has already agreed to the arrangement. Gov. Charlie Crist apparently hasn't yet accepted the invitation.

The face-off would go down March 28 in either Florida or Washington, D.C., and would be hosted by Chris Wallace and aired on Fox News Sunday.

The plan highlights how much attention the race is getting outside Florida, mostly among conservatives who already watch Fox News. Rubio is seen as the antiestablishment Tea Party hero and "real" conservative. Crist is cast as the populist moderate, even as he tries to bolster his own conservative credentials.

​Remember Nelly? Guy hasn't had a single in the Top 20 since 2005. Apparently the only hits he gets now are accidental ones from security at the Fontainebleau.

According to Page Six, Nelly was scheduled to perform at a pre-Super Bowl party Friday night at LIV when his bodyguards got into a fight with security personnel at the hotel. Nelly walked in between and got punched.

"Then it spilled out of the back door and continued outside," Page Six's source said.

Guess it's a good thing he always wears bandages on his face.

In other vaguely Miami-related rapper news: Lil Wayne was supposed to start his jail term today, but it's been delayed till March 2nd so he can get surgery on his mouth.

​Today's photo comes from JJJonathan's Flickr. If you'd like to see your photo here, join our Flickr group.

Reality-TV princess Snooki was in Miami over the weekend and declared on her Twitter page: "I'm comin asap I'm movin to Miami!"

Looks like she'll get her wish, because MovieLine.com reports that season two of the breakout MTV hit Jersey Shore will be shot in South Beach.

The website claims the show will begin taping in May and the cast will stay in a house off Lincoln Road that MTV has rented and is renovating.

An earlier report claimed producers had sent a letter to the owner of Mynt lounge asking if the club would be available for shooting, confirming rumors that season two could end up in South Beach. Though, at the time, MTV was looking to shoot in March and April. Perhaps taping has been pushed back to May during the slower season so producers have more access to potential locations.

We'll update this post if anyone else confirms MovieLine's report.

Gold star to the first person who Photoshops Snooki into a still from Miami Vice, Golden Girls, or Scarface. Say hello to our little friend, indeed.

Update:

via Snooki Shop

​

The owners of Florida's NASCAR-hosting speedways prefer Charlie Crist to Kendrick Meek and Marco. Rubio

​News that Rep. Kendrick Meek is sponsoring NASCAR driver Mike Wallace's car in this weekend's Daytona 500, as well as being part of Wallace's pit crew, had Banana Republican scratching his peel.

The South Florida Democrat, who is giving up his congressional seat to run for the U.S. Senate, does not exactly fall in line with the political views of typical NASCAR fans, usually identified with the number of their favorite driver affixed to a sticker on the back window of their Ford F-250 or Dodge Ram pickup.

In justifying the expensive campaign ad strategy (NASCAR sponsorships range from $25,000 to $150,000 per race), Meek campaign spokesman Adam Sharon fed Banana Republican the same lines he gave Sun-Sentinel reporter Anthony Mann. "Kendrick Meek is a part of the NASCAR nation," Sharon insisted. "He has sponsored legislation to give the speedways in Daytona and Homestead tax breaks. He's a hunter. He owns a gun. He's a family man just like any other regular NASCAR fan."

Socialist crank Hugo Chávez doesn't much care for communication he can't control, so it was only a matter of time before he put the kibosh on Twitter in Venezuela.

Last week, the tag #FreeVenezuela became a trending topic thanks to citizens protesting Chávez's crackdown on press freedom and calling for the president's resignation.

Late last month, Chávez ordered the shutdown of five cable TV stations after they refused to air his addresses. Riots over freedom of the press broke out, leaving at least two young demonstrators dead. The Twitter tag became a cyber component of the protests and at one point reached the third spot on Twitter's trending topics list. Demonstrators also planned some protests through Twitter.

Now the Chávez government have declared Twitter a "tool of terror" and might place restrictions on the site and the Internet in general.

We wonder if any of those Tweets came through the "$15 penis phone" he unveiled last year.

Over the weekend, a Cuban movie critic became the last person in the world to see Avatar.

His verdict: meh.

Weta

​In a review in Granma, the official daily of the Cuban Communist Party, Rolando Pérez Betancourt pooh-poohs the money-minting, Oscar-nominated movie as a dumb action flick.

"Dramatically speaking, Avatar is predictable and lacks imagination in plot development, as is expected of many others of its ilk conceived in Hollywood."

Zing! Unmentioned in the review is how Betancourt managed to catch the 3-D spectacle. Are there state-of-the art IMAX theaters in Havana we haven't heard about? Was it a gift from James Cameron to Fidel Castro, from one trend-bucking iconoclast dictator to another?

via The Orlando Sentinel

​Melanie Leon and Vanessa Alenier, the South Florida lesbian couple who last month won a court case to adopt a child despite Florida's gay adoption ban, apparently weren't sufficiently ugly for the Florida Family Policy Council's propaganda purposes. So in an email blast to its members decrying the decision, the group swapped out a picture of the pair for a photo of two women wearing men's button-down shirts, mullets, and a little upper-lip hair.

Scott Maxwell of the Orlando Sentinel noticed the pic swap and wasted little ink condemning the Florida Family Policy Council:

Blood tests have been completed on Carlos Bertonatti, the aspiring musician accused of drunkenly killing a cyclist on the Rickenbacker Causeway last month and then speeding away.

via Miami Dade Corrections

​The verdict: Bertonatti was drunk. The 28-year-old's BAC came back at .122, Riptide's sources say. In Florida, anyone who blows over a .08 is liable for drunk driving.

How bad is .122? According to this widely used blood alcohol content chart, an average, 180-pound adult would need to slam down six drinks in an hour to match that reading.

Considering that Bertonatti hit Christophe Le Canne, the 44-year-old cyclist, a little after 8 a.m. on a Sunday morning, the reading would imply the singer had done some serious drinking before the accident.

In court yesterday, Bertonatti pleaded not guilty to charges of DUI manslaughter, vehicular homicide, resisting arrest, and leaving the scene of a fatal accident. The court then revoked his bond after prosecutors presented evidence that he'd lied about owning multiple passports.