From his office in Washington, D.C., Diop Kamau has a crystal-clear view of Hollywood — if not the city itself, at least police department. That’s because he’s executive director of the Police Complaint Center, and he’s been hearing the worst about Hollywood cops for the past decade.Yesterday, Kamau (pronounced kuh-MOWH)…
Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration has devised an ingenious way to cut down on the number of homeless families in New York City shelters: Handing out one-way tickets to leave town. And what’s one of the most popular destinations for the fleeing masses? Florida, of course.According to the New York Times,…
That’s a trailer from a UPS-sponsored documentary about last year’s Truck Driving Championships. This year, Hollywood is sending Florida’s finest big-rig pilot: Patrick Condon, who prevailed in the recent statewide competition in Tampa.Sadly, these championships are sanctioned by the American Trucking Associations, which means they reward safety rather than dare-devilry…
You know, what nobody seems to want to talk about is that their newspapers aren’t just going digital; the companies are gradually transforming into pure internet firms rather than newsgathering operations. The fact is that it’s just a whole lot easier to angle for hits in cheap ways than it is…
By helping Obama win Florida, Congressman Robert Wexler earned himself a higher profile in Washington, but the new administration has also placed him in some no-win foreign-policy situations.Wexler, who is Jewish and has a large Jewish constituency in his central Palm Beach and north Broward district, has the unenviable task…
For all the hand-wringing over the North Koreas and Irans of the world, you’d be hard-pressed to find a single nation whose diabolical deeds have done more to undermine the U.S.’s global standing than the world’s peace-loving champions of neutrality. The case against UBS in Fort Lauderdale’s federal court has…
This latest Hollywood police scandal is only the most recent black spot on what I believe can now safely be considered the worst police department in America. The Hollywood department has been plagued with scandal for years, so I thought I’d develop a post that links past stories involving the department’s…
South Florida is so rarely the site of good news about the housing market, it seems worth celebrating with Kirit Shah, a forensic chemist recently retired from NYPD who scored a great deal on a house in Royal Palm Beach that was built three years ago but has never had…
That’s the trailer for Police Women of Broward County (Why not Al’s Angels?), which makes its debut next Friday on TLC. Because if you’re going to launch a reality series on cops, place your chips on the county that birthed the 20-year-old reality series.The cable network has video intros of…
Frey Isn’t the Problem If [Lt. Col. Ricky] Frey is the most qualified for the job and the Deferred Retirement Option Program (DROP) money was primarily from his own contributions, I’m finding it hard to understand the point of your article when it comes to Frey (“Double? Try Triple Dipping,”…
For some employees, Gulfstream Park was a hell of a place to work, full of cocaine and free gambling. When the scheme was finally discovered in 2007, hundreds of thousands of dollars had been stolen from the casino and taxpayers, and now the “family friendly” racetrack is left with a potential public-relations…
Christina Swanson sits backward on a chair, cocks her head, and wraps her rough hands with tape. The younger fighters try not to stare. Maybe it’s the moon-shaped scar on her right cheek. Or the tight, sweaty bun disguising her blond mermaid locks. Or the Ken Doll abs and chiseled…
Charlie Crist will appear at a fundraiser tonight at the Tower Club in downtown Fort Lauderdale. For those who want to roll VIP, the price is five grand.Not sure if that’s a discount from the club’s monthly rate (membership director didn’t return a call immediately), but I suppose this is…
It’s the city where the three best American men at Wimbledon perfected their games, as well as the fourth-ranked woman in the women’s circuit. It’s home to the tennis academy of one of the best female players in history. It has a sparkling city court, one of the nation’s best…
Congressman Alcee L. Hastings (D-Miramar) tried to help gays in the military but says he has been forced to back off “due to pressure from some of my Congressional colleagues and from the White House.” Yesterday, he withdrew his proposed amendment to H.R. 3326, the Department of Defense Appropriations Act,…
Yesterday, I wrote about local businessman and political busybody Earl Rynerson having called out City Manager George Gretsas for holding two controversial meetings for city employees. Today, Fort Lauderdale City Commissioner Charlotte Rodstrom chimed in on the matter. Although she didn’t go as far as Rynerson (who likened Gretsas to…
I’m not as sure as letter-to-the-editor writer Richard Frisbie is that the case of Florida v. Brayman makes a fair comparison to the one between Cambridge police and Prof. Henry Louis Gates. But it’s worth mentioning if only to celebrate the verbosity of late Broward Circuit Court Judge John J…
Not even a month after a team of Sun-Sentinel reporters told South Floridians that the region was better prepared for a hurricane than it was four years ago when Wilma hit, the New York Times is reporting that in Broward County, emergency agencies have significantly less money than before Wilma,…
Oh, this is getting ugly. We told you about Corey Hipscher last week. The 37-year-old somehow managed to get a job at Quiet Waters Park in Deerfield Beach despite being a registered sex offender. A 10-year-old girl says he groped her. And her story sounded familiar to at least two…
GEO Group and Stanford Group: two very rich businesses with offices in Boca Raton, which have both recently caught flak for acting unethically in their respective industries. Totally unrelated, except for one cruel twist of fate: Allen Stanford, awaiting trial on charges of committing a $7 billion fraud, currently finds…
Anybody else notice how buildings seem to be emptying around here? The following Photobucket slide show was posted on a Yahoo Finance messageboard, and it’s a veritable tour of the desolation row that Federal Highway is becoming. It was shot Monday, and here’s the photographer’s explanation of it: I took a drive…
JAABlog has posted a court transcript of a video that catches Hollywood cops making up a story — or “doing a little Walt Disney,” as one put it — to protect a fellow officer involved in a traffic accident. And the story they made up definitely lived up to their…
