A town council member in Southwest Ranches has refused to talk to his constituents about town matters, citing a new ethics ordinance that was approved last Tuesday night by the Broward County Commission.Bill Di Scipio, a Southwest Ranches resident, had been trying to set up a meeting with council member…
Chalk one up for former Hollywood City Manager Cameron Benson and zero so far for the anonymous citizen who accused him of corruption in two letters sent to city commissioners this spring.The letters accused Benson of accepting a bribe from WastePro, which went on to win the city’s waste-hauling contracts,…
Tim Smith, the former city commissioner who once ran for mayor against Jim Naugle and is a frequent jogging buddy of Mayor Jack Seiler, runs a blog in which he sounds off on local issues. He blogged earlier this year about the Food Not Bombs house in South Middle River…
Update: Mangione pleaded not guilty to all counts. He “showed no emotion” in court, according to the Miami Herald. The head law enforcement official for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in South Florida, Anthony Mangione, has been indicted in federal court on counts of transporting, receiving, and possessing child…
Anthony Mangione, head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s South Florida Office since 2007, was arrested today and is being held at the Broward County main jail at the behest of the U.S. Marshals Service. Mangione was the subject of a child pornography investigation starting in April, after AOL alerted…
Sometimes, here at New Times headquarters, when we’re not breaking stories or fielding calls from sexy admirers, we like to conduct experiments and gather a little data. Being compulsive, fire-breathing drunks, it’s only natural that we’d direct our attention to liquor. Being journalists, we also look for ways to make…
It always sucks to inherit a mess when you take office — just ask Barack Obama. The new town administrator of Southwest Ranches, whoever he or she may be, won’t be inheriting two wars and a failed economy (well, maybe the economy part) but will have to face a wave…
In next Wednesday’s meeting, the Broward County Commission will move to adopt language in its state and federal legislative programs “opposing any oil drilling or exploration in or around the Everglades.”The legislative programs are a set agenda of issues that the County Commission hires lobbyists to push for in both…
Every Friday, volunteers with Food Not Bombs lug food over to Stranahan Park, where dozens of homeless people while away the day to the chagrin of police, local businesses, and (we’re told but haven’t confirmed) Broward County Library officials. Until recently, the cops had a mobile “Skywatch” unit parked there…
UPDATE: After Ft. Lauderdale passed a controversial homeless feeding restriction law, Arnold Abbott was stopped and cited by police for feeding the homeless on November 2, 2014. On November 4th, 2014, he was cited a second time. When we were reporting last week’s cover story on Food Not Bombs, one…
When the Pulp tried to ask Broward Sheriff Al Lamberti a question about campaign donations on his Facebook page last month, the sheriff responded sternly, unfriended our editor, and removed the post. In his initial response, he wrote, “This is my personal Facebook page and you are disrespecting my prior…
Late one afternoon this summer in Lake Eola Park, Keith McHenry got arrested — again — for trying to serve free food in public. While his compatriots were setting up a vegan meal of vegetable stir-fry, ears of corn, and potatoes donated from a local natural-food store, McHenry was on…
Last week, as we were talking to Fort Lauderdale Mayor Jack Seiler about sea turtles, we were also finishing up this week’s cover story, Food Fight. The story chronicles the ongoing struggle of Food Not Bombs to pass out free food and attract attention to its political message.So, as the…
“I don’t feel like I did anything wrong,” maintains Toussain Puddie, the 30-year-old former TSA screener who took home Rick Case’s pen and now faces grand-theft charges at the behest of Case and his family.After our coverage of Puddie and his lawyer preparing to face the heavy charges, the State…
Dan Christensen lost his job in the Miami Herald’s Broward bureau in 2009, a casualty of rampant cost-cutting in daily journalism. Rather than throw in the towel, Christensen started his own local news site, Broward Bulldog, and vowed to continue breaking stories. “This website was the only way to do…
Activists protesting the death of baby sea turtles because of Fort Lauderdale’s flawed beach lighting know how to get Mayor Jack Seiler’s attention: holding signs up against the windows of City Hall during a commission meeting, passing out his private cell phone number, calling him a murderer. Ana Campos, organizer of…
“MAYOR SEILER HATES BABY TURTLES!” That’s a popular refrain these days among advocates for sea turtles on Fort Lauderdale’s beaches. Around this time of year, eggs buried by mother turtles on the beach hatch, releasing inch-long baby turtles who need to find their way to the sea. They usually do…
Hunters and environmentalists are clashing over a plan that would open the last unhunted section of Big Cypress National Preserve in the Everglades to hunting. Opponents argue that a man-made reduction in the white-tailed deer population would reduce a primary food source for the region’s dwindling population of Florida panthers…
For a while, there wasn’t much public outcry about Southwest Ranches’ proposal to woo the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), a for-profit prison contractor, to build an 1,800-bed immigrant detention facility at the edge of the Everglades. Yesterday, immigrants-rights advocates and local residents clustered at the intersection of Griffin and…
A room at the Weston Hyatt was split down the middle last night between hunters and environmentalists who offered two-minute commentaries on what action the Park Service should take regarding deer hunting in the 146,000-acre Big Cypress Addition Lands.If you had to ask this Pulp reporter to make a wager,…
The National Park Service is poised to implement a plan that would allow hunting in one of the last outposts of untrammeled land in the Everglades: the northeast corner of the Big Cypress National Preserve.The rest of the preserve is already open to hunting, but this section, called the Big…
On February 27, 2009, Joey Bartolucci walked into East Coast Pain Clinic. He received 150 Dilaudid painkiller pills and 30 Xanax pills, according to prosecutors in Palm Beach County. Sometime that night or the next day, Bartolucci died. Medical examiners attributed the death to an overdose.The pain clinic was run…
