Victor Ramirez, the Fort Lauderdale police officer who slapped a homeless man who wanted to use a public restroom, didn’t bother mentioning the slapping part in the arrest report he filed. Ramirez arrested Bruce Laclair, a 58-year-old homeless man, on Sunday, February 22, for trespassing. The exchange between cop and…
The Boynton Beach Police Department is under an FBI investigation for brutally beating a suspect who had led them on a high-speed chase on August 20, 2014. And in an effort to give “some context to the public,” the BBPD showed helicopter footage captured by PBSO that night. Byron Harris,…
UPDATE: Victor Ramirez, the Fort Lauderdale police officer seen in this video slapping a homeless man who wanted to use a public restroom, didn’t bother mentioning the slapping part in the arrest report he filed. A video is being shared online of what appears to be a Fort Lauderdale Police…
Florida leads the nation in charging juveniles as adults — a result of the state’s controversial Direct File law, which gives prosecutors the power to charge juveniles as adults whenever they choose. Experts say this unchecked power causes myriad problems, ranging from extreme sentences to forced pleas — and Rep…
The Florida Department of Juvenile Justice has released its annual Delinquency in Schools report, and there’s some good news: School arrests are down across the state, including Broward and Palm Beach counties. The bad news: black youths are proportionately arrested most in nearly every single county in Florida. DJJ’s report…
TV actor Nicholas Brendan was hanging out at Shock Pop Comic Con in Fort Lauderdale when, at some point, he decided to take things up a few levels and show those comic nerds how real deal celebs party down — and then he ended up behind bars for not paying…
Once he stole bass lines from Queen and David Bowie. Now he’s nabbing pool heaters. Palm Beach County’s Robert Van Winkle — or Vanilla Ice to all you ’90s nostalgia junkies — apparently hasn’t hung up the thug life. The 47-year-old was arrested by Lantana Police for a residential burglary,…
Riviera Beach Police busted into a home by shooting out the front windows and throwing a flash-bang grenade before pointing a gun at the homeowner in search of drugs and money. But turns out, they got the wrong house. And the woman whose house they broke into and held at…
Last summer, we brought you a sad tragedy from the streets of Hollywood involving a love triangle involving a gang-banging drug dealer, a young woman, and the struggling MMA-fighter they allegedly murdered. Now, there’s a coda to the murder of Michael Rivera. The father of the man police say pulled…
Every patrolling police officer in Florida may soon be required to have a body camera, but the ACLU says proposed restrictions on how footage can be released to the public does more to protect police misconduct than fight it. For weeks, Rep. Shevrin Jones has been pushing House Bill 47,…
A 65-year-old West Palm Beach man at the center of a million-dollar gambling bust last week has a long history of running similar operations with Italian Mafia ties that goes back to when Ronald Reagan ruled the nation. Pasquale “Patsy” Capolongo was taken into custody along with several other men…
Reuben Stacy, a 37-year-old black man, hangs from a tree on Old Davie Road in Fort Lauderdale, blood trickling down his body and dripping off his toes. Behind him, a white girl, about 7 years old, looks on, a strange smile on her face as she takes in the sight…
The 2012 shooting of 24-year-old Seth Adams at the hands of a Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office deputy has received new interest as a civil investigation by the family’s attorney has renewed doubts about the police narrative of what led to the fatal encounter. PBSO’s story is that Sgt. Michael Custer,…
Don’t worry that local police departments are getting special training from the federal government to deal with “civil disturbances” — it’s merely to protect your freedom of speech. That’s what BSO and several other police departments are saying about a program they’re participating in that is offered by the Department…
In the annals of criminal enterprise, this has to have been tried before. It’s the old I-don’t-know-what-you’re-talking-about-officer-I-was-blacked-out excuse. Unfortunately for one Jupiter resident who allegedly made off with a stash of expensive jewelry, when police confronted her with the evidence, this was all she could come up with. A successful…
Remember those wild and crazy BSO deputies who were suspected of leaving a West Palm Beach strip club and then shooting at a nearby Walgreens? Well, one of those deputies has turned himself in on charges of “discharging a firearm from a vehicle” — a second-degree felony. Deputy Norman Stepelton,…
It might be several months before the autopsy results of Khamis Shatara, the 21-year-old shot and killed by his off-duty PBSO deputy father on Christmas Eve, are released to the public. That’s because the death is being investigated as an “officer-involved shooting” even though the elder Shatara was at home…
Cruises pretty much sell themselves on their care-free vibes: Come stay with us on this floating five-star hotel, where you don’t have to worry about anything except getting to the buffet before the cheese blintzes run out. The truth is that there’s a shady underbelly attached to the cruise business…
A brutal sex trafficking ring that was first busted in 1998 is finally coming to an official close with the last two leaders of the multinational network pleading guilty in federal court. Alberto Cadena-Sosa, a 46-year-old Mexican national, was sentenced to 15 years after pleading guilty to conspiring and holding…
It was December 13, 2012, when 40-year-old Sunjee Louissaint, a soft-spoken woman with gentle eyes, looked across the front yard of her West Palm Beach home and saw two green-and-gold-striped Palm Beach County Sheriff’s cruisers. Two deputies had pinned her 17-year-old son, Devin, to the ground. She heard a bang…
Next month, Rick Scott will win the distinction of “Florida’s Most Deadly Governor” when he surpasses Jeb Bush in the number of executions under his watch since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. Since taking office in 2011, Scott has signed 21 death warrants — the same number Bush…
Back on January 5 at 3:37 a.m., a shot was fired in front of the Walgreens on Haverhill Road and Okeechobee Road in West Palm Beach. PBSO confirmed then that a shot was fired but didn’t release any details. But this week, Florida Cop Watch reported something a little more…
