It seems that Scott Israel now has two serious challengers standing between himself and another term as Broward County Sheriff. Until this month, only one of the candidates running to defeat Israel — former cop Willie Jones — appeared to have spent much time working as a cop in South…
On Thursday, New Times spoke to Pansy Clayton, a nursing assistant who works at the Hillcrest Healthcare and Rehabilitation Center, a nursing home in Hollywood owned by Consulate Health Care, a national nursing home chain. That day, Clayton was one of hundreds of protesters demonstrating outside Consulate’s properties, claiming that…
Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel has ushered in a reluctant era of change at the sheriff’s office — when cops break the law, Israel has said there will be “no thin blue line” to shelter them. He’s pushed body cameras onto a department that clearly didn’t want them. Five candidates…
According to U.S. Census data, there are roughly 1.8 million people living in Broward County. It’s a majority-minority country: 28 percent of those people — some 600,000 residents — identify as black or African American, and another 27 percent identify as Hispanic or Latino. As such, a local panel of…
The Unitarian Universalist Church in Oakland Park might seem an unlikely home for a school. Well-worn carpet lines the hallways, and a thicket of trees shades the lawn. Broward’s Black Lives Matter Alliance hosts its weekly meetings here, as does a group of pagans. From 9 a.m. to 4 p.m…
At this point, it’s clear that virtually all of the support for Tim Canova’s congressional campaign is coming from the same frothing section of the populace that’s pulling for Bernie Sanders. In March, two major unions — the Communication Workers of America and National Nurses United — both endorsed Canova…
Before Pansy Clayton, 60, emigrated from Jamaica years ago, she spent some time caring for her sick mother. “I realized I had a passion for it,” she tells New Times. “When I came to this country, my first job was to take care of children. After that, I said, ‘Let me…
Tax issues aren’t exactly “sexy,” but bear with us here, because Boca Raton voted to give an anonymous company called “Project P2P” $6 million in taxpayer money last night. According to county documents, the company is looking to expand massively, and create more than 800 new jobs. But thanks to…
Last December, when Deerfield Beach tried to crack down on “puppy mills” — massive, commercial dog-breeding facilities that churn out animals with no regard for their welfare — a rash of people complained. The ordinance banned pet stores from selling any “commercially bred” dogs or cats, and Petland, a national chain…
After raising a flabbergasting amount of money — more than a half million dollars — in his first three months of campaigning, Tim Canova can now call himself the first bona-fide primary challenger in Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s career. To prove that point, Canova, who is challenging the Democrat for her seat…
Fighting for political rights in Florida is a Sisyphean task, sort of like trying to dam the Atlantic Ocean. It takes a certain kind of spunk to try and stand up to politicians in South Florida — a land founded on the idea that condominiums have more inherent value than…
On Tuesday, Cara Jennings called Florida governor Rick Scott an “asshole” to his face in a Gainesville Starbucks. His immediate reaction was to calmly walk away, as he should have. And that should have been the end of things. But it wasn’t. Rather than letting the criticism wash off his back,…
A few years ago, a teenager approached Mari Frankel, a local documentarian, saying she’d been abused at Pembroke Pines’ Center for Adolescent Treatment Services, which houses boys and girls aged 14-18 who have emotional, behavioral, or mental health issues. The girl, Frankel said, claimed she’d been drugged there. But Frankel…
It’s long been suspected that laundered money, shady deals, bejeweled Russian oligarchs, and various ne’er-do-wells have been propping up South Florida’s real estate market since the 2008 financial crash. The South Florida coastline — from South Beach all the way up to the Treasure Coast — has undergone such a…
On Monday, New Times reported that the family of Michael Saphir, a mentally disabled alumnus of Cypress Bay High School, is suing the Broward County Public School District, claiming a district employee “masturbated” their son and continually sexually harassed him. That suit accused the district of hiding the Saphirs’ claims from…
When New Times first profiled Tim Canova in January, the onetime Bernie Sanders adviser running to take Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s congressional seat, a handful of political analysts wrote him off entirely. “It totally comes down to money,” said David Custin. “The conventional wisdom says, ‘Nope, no way. The guy running against…
In 2012, Michael Saphir was a student at Cypress Bay High in Weston. Saphir has severe developmental disabilities and functions at the level of a 10-year-old. Because of this, Barbara and Albert Saphir say they found it strange when a Cypress Bay teacher danced “all over” their son at the…
In 2001, Lional Dalton won a Super Bowl with the Baltimore Ravens. He started three games that season as a defensive tackle. But in 2006, Dalton succumbed to injuries to his spine and retired. Now, ten years later, his lawyers say he’s become so debilitated by his injuries that traveling around…
When Richard Couto went undercover into Loxahatchee’s Rancho Garcia farm, he found pigs slaughtered and goats skinned alive. Couto, the founder of Animal Recovery Mission (ARM), a nonprofit animal-abuse investigation firm, made covert videos and brought them to police. “Basically anything and everything they could do to make a dollar…
On Sunday, March 13, Donald Trump held a massive rally at Boca Raton’s Sunset Cove Amphitheater. Despite the fact that Trump’s rallies have been overcome with violence and hatred as of late, initial reports said the few thousand attendees in Florida had been “peaceful.” As it turns out, this may…
Last week, the New York Times released a staggering investigation, alleging that the NFL’s concussion-research team used faulty data to downplay athletes’ risk of developing chronic traumatic encephalopathy, commonly known as CTE. The disease, which has been repeatedly diagnosed in football players, causes a person’s brain matter — and memory —…
“It’s a lot easier to cool a body from the inside-out, rather than the outside-in,” says Catherine Baldwin, CEO of Suspended Animation, a Boynton Beach company that specializes in transporting dead bodies to be cryogenically frozen and stored. Thursday night, she spoke from a podium at the Church of Perpetual…
