If there was any lingering confusion about why Tomás Regalado chose his old friend Miguel Exposito as Miami's new chief of police, the veteran officer quickly cleared it up at his official introduction earlier this afternoon.
Photo by Tim Elfrink
New Police Chief Miguel Exposito stands with (from left) City Manager Pete Hernandez, Mayor Tomás Regaldo, and Commisioner Marc Sarnoff.
​Flanked by the surviving members of our quickly shrinking city commission, Exposito delivered a speech that could have doubled as a Regalado campaign missive.
Exposito pledged to "get back to basics," promising to cut unnecessary programs and put more cops on the streets, especially downtown.
"We've got a lot of specialty units right now that are nice to have, but considering our budget constraints might not be necessary," Exposito said. "Our focus needs to be on basic street patrols."
Sound familiar? That's essentially the same kind of cost-hacking promise that won Regalado a term in the mayor's chair.
Exposito, who will earn $196,000 a year as Miami's top cop, pointed specifically to MPD's helicopter unit as one division that might feel the ax after he officially takes over the department next week.
"Helicopters are nice in a big city like Los Angeles, but I'm not sure we need a unit like that in Miami," Exposito said.
Click through for a video of Exposito's introduction at city hall.
​While putting out a fire inside an empty house at 2021 SW 58th Ct. early yesterday morning, Miami-Dade firefighters spotted a bunch of suspiciously mellow potted plants and tipped off the police. Narcotics detectives found 34 hydroponic marijuana plants -- which we now expect they will destroy in some depraved ceremony.
The weed was worth $8,000 to $10,000, cops estimate. Nobody was in the house during the fire or the raid, but we expect whoever was on the lease is headed back to Vancouver as fast as their Volkswagen bus will take them.
We feel obliged by the fact that we have a music feature about Julian Marley in this week's New Times to point out that this is, like, bullshit, man.
So, Miami will hold a special election to fill the seat that Commissioner Michelle Spence-Jones was booted from after turning herself in for grand theft charges a day after she was sworn in for her second term. And you'll never guess who's considering a run: Michelle Spence-Jones!
Spence-Jones is eligible to run since she hasn't been convicted of anything.
"I am considering it, but I have not made a decision yet," she told CBS4.
CBS4 reminds us of a similar situation in 1998 when Commissioner Humberto Hernandez was removed from office, ran in the special election and won with 65% of the vote, only to be removed from office again a few months later.
Mayor Regalado announced the special election today after Gov. Crist refused to appoint a replacement. The election is expected to be held in mid-January and will cost the city in the neighborhood of $200,000. Meanwhile, voters in District 4 are heading to the polls today for the run-off election between Francis Suarez and Manolo Reyes.
At Northwestern University, there's a remarkable student-led initiative called the Innocence Project. Since 1991, the J-school program has helped free 11 wrongfully convicted men with good old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting on the flawed cases.
via Illinois Dept. of Corrections
Anthony McKinney
​In the case of Anthony McKinney, sentenced to life over a 1978 shotgun killing, it looked like they had a 12th.
In 2004, a group of students including Evan Benn, a former Miami Herald reporter, got a videotaped confession from another man present at the shooting, absolving McKinney of guilt.
But in the course of reassessing McKinney's case, prosecutors issued sweeping subpoenas for the students' grades and off-the-record interviews.
Northwestern has refused to give prosecutors any of the students' reporting, and Innocence Project director David Protess told the Chicago Tribune the prosecutors' case is "so filled with factual errors that if my students had done this kind of reporting or investigating, I would have given them an F."
Now Benn is speaking out about the charges. He spent several years at the Herald before taking a buyout this summer and moving with his wife to St. Louis. He's now a feature writer at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
An iPhone buzzes inside a Wynwood restaurant, and Naudimar Herrera's bright brown eyes light up when he sees the caller: the downtown Federal Detention Center.
Photo by Tim Elfrink
Naudimar Herrera in front of his parents' Midtown apartment.
​"Patrick, what's up, my brother?" he barks into the phone. "You got to hang in there, man."
On the other end, Patrick Abraham sits in a prison cell that's mostly been his home for the past three years.
Both men were arrested -- along with five others -- as the "Liberty City Seven."
The feds charged them with plotting to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago, saying they wanted to "wage a full ground war on the United States."
After two mistrials, the feds finally notched convictions this past May for five of the defendants. A sixth faces deportation to Haiti.
Only the slight, 25-year-old Dominican-American Herrera walked free. This week, he'll speak at the sentencing hearings for his former codefendants. He'll even plead for leniency for Narseal Batiste -- the group's leader, whose "stupidity and greed" led to the charges, Herrera says.
"How can I go on living every day knowing my brothers are still locked up over nothing?" he asks.
​On October 19, a near-riot erupted at the student center at Miami Gardens' Florida Memorial University. As captured in amateur video filmed by junior Jeffrey Y. Martin, security guards barricaded another student, 19-year old Emory Mitchell, in a bathroom. After students slammed through the door, an Allied Barton security guard pulled his handgun and waved it at the crowd.
Mitchell was charged with felony battery for his role in the altercation and spent more than a week in jail. In the incident's aftermath, FMU administrators seemed to side with the security guards, suspending Mitchell and issuing a statement including:
The security officers involved in the incident attempted to restrain the male student, who responded by assaulting the security officers.
That statement could become borderline libelous in about 24 hours. Mitchell's due in court on Wednesday morning. He sent Riptide the following text yesterday afternoon:
YES!!! I just got a call from my attorneys saying my charges were dismissed and I can now proceed with filing charges of my own!
His attorney Joseph Vredevelt, after first prefacing that there "should be some major developments in the case on Wednesday," gave us a non-denial denial when asked about the dismissal, telling Riptide that "the State Attorney's Office gets angry when you say stuff like that... so this is going to have to be an official no comment."
​The big legal battle over a little book has come to an end today. The U.S. Supreme Court decided it won't take up the case.
The Miami-Dade County School Board removed Vamos a Cuba from library shelves in 2006 after a parent complained that the 32-page book for young readers portrayed a sunny description of a Cuba that doesn't exist.
Supporters of the book said the point of the book, and the series it was a part of, was to provide a few basic facts about a country and to illustrate that children around the world are basically the same. Detractors said it was factually incorrect by omitting the tidbit that Cuban children live under the rule of a communist dictator.
The school board banned the book in a 6-3 decision, with some members reportedly afraid of violent retaliation if they didn't ban the book (wait, who lives under a brutal regime?). The ACLU of Florida sued, but lost a number of appeals.
Today the Supreme Court decided not to take up the case. Previous appeals decisions sided with the school board, saying it was within its rights to remove factually incorrect material.
In other news, the court also decided to reject a case involving the Washington Redskins logo, brought by Native American groups. Florida State Seminoles are breathing a sigh of relief.
​Although the self-funded, self-taught programmers are taking on a computer giant, we wrote, they might just have a chance to win on their legal merits.
That chance just got slimmer. U.S. District Judge William Alsup has granted Apple a summary judgment, agreeing that Psystar infringed on its copyright.
"Psystar infringed Apple's exclusive rights to create derivative works of Mac OS X," Alsup writes, "by replacing original files in Mac OS X with unauthorized software files."
Alsup also agreed with Apple that Psystar violated portions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The judge, in the same ruling, tossed out all of Psystar's requests for a summary judgment.
So is this the end of the line for Psystar? No. There's still a good bit of legal conflict to sort out.
​A day after being sworn in for her second term on the Miami city commission, Michelle Spence-Jones has surrendered to police and faces grand theft charges. Prosecutors allege Spence-Jones forged letters, at least one in the name of a former county commissioner, and steered $50,000 in county grants to a family business before she was elected. Some of that money went directly to the pockets of Spence-Jones and her brother, and was used to pay off personal expenses. At the time, she was working as an aide to Mayor Manny Diaz.
According to the Miami Herald, Spence-Jones was surrounded by supporters singing "We Shall Overcome," and she declared her innocence before being arrested.
Yesterday, delivering a racially charged speech at her swearing-in ceremony, Spence-Jones declared the allegation a public lynching.
"They don't know this nappy-headed child of God has her armor on,'' she told the crowd, to rapturous applause.
The arrest also comes a day after news that Commissioner Angel Gonzalez would resign amid charges he illegally secured a no-show job for his daughter.
The news leaves the commission practically empty. Only veteran Marc Sarnoff and newly elected Frank Carollo are left. A runoff between Francis Suarez and Manolo Reyes is set for Tuesday, but the winner would not be sworn in for five days.
​Three-legged dogs and one-eyed cats might want to hobble to the next county. There are few animal shelters with no-kill policies in Miami-Dade, and one of them closed last month. The Human Society has since taken over the family-run Pet Rescue in Miami Gardens. But there's more to the story, says Robbie Coy, founder of Sabbath Memorial Dog Rescue.
The Humane Society protects "adoptable pets." Problem is, many animals at Pet Rescue are old, antisocial, or disabled. Says Coy: "What they'll do is euthanize them all." He claims Pet Rescue owners and directors refused his "six-figure offer" to buy the shelter and save the animals. The reason: They wanted cushy paid positions with the Humane Society, he says.
Two calls to the shelter were not returned to Riptide by deadline.
A couple of months ago, Coy heard Pet Rescue was having financial trouble. He phoned directors at the four-acre, family-run center with a proposition: He'd buy the place for $200,000. "I've been running my own shelter for a decade... It was a marriage made in heaven," Coy insists. Instead, directors gave him the cold shoulder.
In late October, the Humane Society issued a news release. It stated, "Together with Pet Rescue, the Humane Society of Greater Miami will become even a stronger leader in the animal welfare community than it is today."
City of Miami Police Chief John Timoney has resigned, according to sources. His resignation comes as Tomas Regalado is being sworn in as mayor. Regalado made firing Timoney a frequent point in his campaign. It appears Timoney beat Regalado to the punch before he could pressure the city manager to push through a pink slip for the city's top cop.
Calls to the city manager and other city officials weren't returned, probably because most are attending Regalado's inauguration. More information to come.
Police arrested a Miami Southridge Senior High School teacher today on charges that he molested a 14-year-old boy on multiple occasions.
​The teacher, Frank Matthew Galatas, allegedly performed oral sex on the boy twice last month, says Officer Jeffrey Giordano, a spokesman for the Miami Police Department.
Galatas, who is 28 years old, befriended the boy two years ago when he was his teacher, Giordano says.
The boy's mother, who is a single parent, had invited Galatas to become a "role model" for her son.
On Oct. 17, according to Galatas' arrest report, he called the victim's mom and said he needed a place to stay for the night because he was fighting with his wife. The victim told police that he awoke to Galatas sexually assaulting him.
A few days later, police say, the same thing happened when the 14-year-old spent the night at Galatas' place.
Galatas faces two counts of lewd and lavicious battery on a minor.
Update: Police have released Galatas' mug shot. Click through for the photo.
​Google, what have you ever done for us? Besides search, free email, YouTube, Blogger, GTalk, Chrome, Google Docs, etc. That's nice and all, but they've never given us a holiday present, until now.
Google will be giving away free WiFi at some of America's busiest airpots starting now and ending on January 15, 2010.
Travelers at Miami International, Ft. Lauderdale and West Palm Beach will all get the gift of free internet connection (now there's no excuse to miss Riptide while you're away). Google only asks that you think about contributing to a charity. They'll match donations, up to $250,000 per airport. The airport that hosts the most charitable travelers will then be given extra money to give to a local charity.
​Riptide sure hates when we forget where one of our building are. There's always a bit of panic, and then we retrace our steps trying to remember where we left it. Was it in Kendall? No, how about Hialeah? Then we call up our friends, "Hey, Do you remember where I left my building? I had it Saturday night, right? Remember, that stucco two story with the Mediterranean roof? No, I already called the club. It's not there. I hope someone didn't swipe it ...or maybe I left it in my jacket pocket ...false alarm, found it!"
Losing a single building is completely understandable, right? But 18,000 buildings? How could any one lose track of 18,000 buildings? Well, the Florida Government has done just that, and has no idea how much it will cost to track down thousands of missing taxpayer-owned buildings.
An Aymara woman mourns in 2003 after the Black October massacre.
​The Bolivians claimed that former President Gonzalo "Goni" Sanchez de Lozada and defense minister Carlos Sanchez Berzain -- who now resides in Key Biscayne -- ordered the army to gun down dozens of Aymara Indians to halt sweeping protests against their regime.
The case, we wrote, would be a major test of America's resolve to punish foreign leaders who flee to the States to escape their crimes at home.
Round one of the case finally wrapped up yesterday, and you can score a big win for the Bolivian plaintiffs.
District Judge Adalberto Jordan, ruling on Goni and Berzain's request for a dismissal, found that the Bolivians have more than sufficient evidence and legal standing in Miami to proceed.
"The decision is a great victory for the plaintiffs," says Judith Brown Chomsky, one of the lawyers representing the Bolivians. "(It) reaffirms that U.S. courts are an appropriate venue for bringing perpetrators of human rights violations to account."
A year ago, a 33-year-old financier named Javier bought a two-bedroom condo in a posh new building downtown for just under $200,000. From his white leather couch, his gigantic windows offer spectacular views of both the river and the bay. He walks to Heat games, takes the Metromover, and is a regular at upscale Brickell restaurants. To Miami city planners and developers, he is as elusive and mythical a creature as Sasquatch. He is the urban-dwelling yuppie.
One problem: Javier wants out of downtown. In fact, he won't allow his last name, or the name of his building, to be used in this story, because he's hoping to sell his unit. It's not the parking, or the crime, or the lack of neighbors that is chasing Javier away. It's the noise. "Sleep is very important to me," he says. "When my windows are rattling, and I'm tossing and turning because of the boats, I'd rather get a quiet place somewhere else."
It's those damn shrimp boats, Javier says. The "wingnet" rigs trawl the Miami River and Biscayne Bay all night, throttling their engines to make turns and, Javier says, periodically blasting deafening horns. He says the boats usually wake him up around 2 a.m. Shrimpers hunt their minuscule prey at night, when they've migrated to shallow waters. "It's definitely not something I was aware of when I bought the place," Javier laments.
​Several media are reporting that eight people have been shot and two killed in an Orlando office building. It happened just before noon at the Gateway Office Center near Lake Ivanhoe. The Orlando Sentinel says that one victim has been killed, and two are in serious condition. Police have taken suspect Jason Rodriguez, 40, into custody.
Rodriguez is a former employee of Reynolds, Smith & Hill, and all the victims have been confirmed to also have been employees of the company, but that he shot indiscriminately.
Bodies were found on the eighth and twelfth floor of the building, which is called Legions Place, the Sentinel reports. People throughout the skyscraper had barricaded themselves into offices.
Governor Charlie Crist has cancelled his events for the day, and is headed to Orlando.
The shooting follows yesterday's massacre at Texas's Fort Hood, in which 31 people were wounded and twelve killed. You can see live video of the site here.
Our misadventures in destroying -- and failing to rebuild -- the Everglades have led to one of the highest concentrations of endangered and threatened animals in the U.S. There are 13 endangered species in the Glades today and another nine on the threatened list, according to FIU's database.
Today, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced two more lucky winners that have been sufficiently screwed by South Florida to merit consideration under the Endangered Species Act.
Meet the Florida bonneted bat and the Florida bristle fern. Please be kind to them, because apparently there aren't too many left.
​Is the University of Miami crazy? Well, if they are don't be surprised if their new psychiatrist pumps them full of lots and lots of GlaxoSmithKline pills.
psychiatry department. Nemeroff is an internationally known expert on depression, unfortunately he's also widely known for a bit of deception.
While head of Emory University's psychiatry department he failed to report $800,000 he was given for speaking fees from drug company GlaxoSmithKline.
Since 2000, Nemeroff had taken more than $2.8 million from drug companies. That's the company that makes anti-depressants like Paxil and Wellbutrin, and his ties to the company presented a conflict of interest. Criticism even extended to the Senate where he was taken to task by Sen. Chuck Grassley.
Riptide was feeling all warm and fuzzy this morning. No, it wasn't just from all the vodka in our coffee. (What, like you don't start your day with a little 'Russian java'?)
​The latest employment numbers came out this morning, and it looks like our Kanye-on-the-VMAs-esque disaster of an economy is finally on the rebound. The ArmaRecession may finally be hitting rock bottom. Yay!
But then we talked to Peter Zalewski, head of Condo Vultures and both Riptide and Michael Moore's favorite messenger of doom on our housing market. Zalewski just released some new foreclosure numbers for the area, and damned if they didn't sober us right up out of our Moscow espresso haze.
On average, South Florida lenders filed foreclosure papers on 272 properties every single day last month, according to Zalewski's research.
"It's still a lot of foreclosures compared to past years," Zalewski says.
The October foreclosure-fest means that lenders in Broward, Palm Beach and Miami are on pace for 98,000 foreclosures this year -- a huge leap from the 33,000 they filed in 2007, according to Zalewski's research.
​In 2007, popular University of Miami Law Professor D. Marvin Jones was arrested for allegedly pulling up to an undercover cop in his 2004 Mercedes SL500 and offering her $20 for sex. Jones maintained his innocence, and the charges were quietly dropped. That should have been the end of that, but last month popular blog Above the Law (which bills itself as "a legal tabloid," and which you might remember from its part in the Miami White scandal), got a hold of the info and made a series of posts, milking it for gossipy fun. (Sample joke: " If you're looking to score some ass, why not stick to the U. Miami student body? At least they won't charge.")
The handful of City of Miami voters who bothered to roll by the polls yesterday sent an age-old but always cringe-inducing message: Cash and name recognition wins elections.
via Tomas Regalado for Mayor
Your next mayor's real campaign slogan: NO!
​Actual plans for the city? Meh. Not so important.
In the four contested races in the city, voters went nuts over well-funded Tomas Regalado for mayor (71.67 percent) and incumbent Michelle Spence Jones in District 5 (82.75 percent), and gave a nod in District 3 to Frank Carollo (52.29 percent). They sent District 4's Francis Suarez and Manolo Reyes to a runoff.
So what do these guys have in common? What grand, overarching vision for the City of Miami's future can we divine from these results?
First, take the mayor's race. Tomas Regalado's message to voters basically boiled down to one word: NO. Regalado didn't really run on his merits as much as he ran as far away as possible from outgoing mayor Manny Diaz. Regalado was the change candidate and his opponent, Joe Sanchez, could never escape his typecast as Diaz's Mini-Me.
It didn't hurt his chances that Regalado raised almost a third more cash than Sanchez, and dominated the older, Cuban-American demographic (who were likely none too upset about his past support for terrorist Eduardo Arocena).
​On Sunday, a gambler at the Seminole Hard Rock Casino in Tampa was playing a $4 slot machine when its bells started ringing and an enormous figure began flashing on its jackpot screen: $166,666,666.65. Bill Seebeck thought he was set for life.
It's not the first time the Seminole tribe has pulled a similar gambit. In 2007, a Sunny Isles man was playing the slots at Seminole Hard Rock Resort & Casino in Hollywood when it appeared that he hit a jackpot worth more than $259,000. He was even given an oversized check for the amount- before casino officials attributed the win to a "computer glitch" and told him he would not be paid. After the story hit was reported in the news, the tribe decided to pay the full amount.
Seebeck probably shouldn't hold his breath for a similar reversal concerning his own enormous jackpot- although you can't blame him for trying. From an ABC news report:
Seebeck says he is looking for a lawyer to help him comprehend the
convoluted federal Indian gaming regulations to possibly pursue legal
action.
Update: Well, that was quick.We just received a statement from Seminole Hard Rock with the news that they've reached a "good faith" settlement, for an undisclosed amount, with Seebeck. Something about the way this is worded tells us the gambler remains a non-millionaire- although he might have a couple of thousand bucks to whittle away on more slots:
The Seminole Hard Rock Casino Tampa has made an offer to William Seebeck, and he has accepted, recognizing that the slot machine he was playing on Sunday malfunctioned, in what can be best described to the layman as a "computer glitch." The maximum payout on the Ultimate Party Spin machine played by Seebeck is $99,000, although his bet of $1.50 at the time of the malfunction could have generated a maximum payout of only $2,500, with the right combination. Determination of a malfunction was made by representatives of the machine's manufacturer and software provider, according to established gaming industry standards, with confirmation from an independent third-party laboratory analysis. The casino has opted to settle this matter for an undisclosed amount as a good faith gesture, and we look forward to welcoming Mr. Seebeck on future visits.
Let's just get this out of the way: Riptide is the last place you'll read any criticism of Alan Grayson, the U.S. representative from Orlando, for his raging political Tourette's syndrome.
​We wish more politicians would jump on the Grayson crazy train.
Or possibly our favorite Grayson quote, talking about his deep loathing for Dick Cheney:
I have trouble listening to what he says sometimes because of the blood that drips from his teeth when he's talking.
Boom! You say, "lowering the national dialogue," we say pure political comedy gold.
Well, if you missed it this weekend, the New York Times "Week in Review" weighed in on the Grayson phenomenon and came up with a novel theory on the freshman rep: He might just be the first liberal wing nut.
​A swastika was found drawn on a University of Miami bathroom wall near the Miller Center for Contemporary Judaic Studies. Another swastika was found in the same area almost a year ago.
President Donna Shalala released a statement condemning the act:
On Tuesday someone drew a swastika on a wall in the men's restroom near the Miller Center for Contemporary Judaic Studies in the Merrick Building. This incident and a similar one that occurred last November in the same location have been reported to University Police and are under investigation. Defacement of University property is a crime--and to do so with this symbol of hatred, which is offensive to all of us, is a despicable and cowardly act. The University of Miami is a place where all are welcome in a spirit of learning and acceptance. There is no place in our community for bigotry and intolerance. I condemn these acts in the strongest of terms on behalf of the University.
If the other radio stations jumped off a cliff, would you do it too?
​Just don't hold your breath for any real explanation from the candidate.
A quick recap: in 1983, a Spanish-language radio station where Regalado worked as program director helped raise more than $21,000 for the defense fund of Eduardo Arocena. The dockworker was eventually convicted of blasting 32 bombs in NYC and Miami and planning the murder of a New Jersey activist.
Regalado declined to return multiple phone calls from Riptide on the subject -- and even dodged a call from the "King of All Spanish Media," Enrique Santos.
That finally changed in this morning's Miami Herald, where Regalado offered the classic kindergarten playground excuse for supporting Arocena: But everyone else was doing it!
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So, Miami will hold a special election to fill the seat that Commissioner Michelle Spence-Jones was booted from after turning herself in for grand theft charges a day after she was sworn in for her second term. And you'll never guess who's considering a run: Michelle Spence-Jones! 
