When Peacocks Attack

You can’t get anything past that Mark Potter. To report on the booming black market for pain meds, the NBC correspondent charged fearlessly into the belly of the beast: Broward County. At the 1:25 mark in this video, the NBC reporter accuses a local bench and one familiar-looking newspaper.Visit msnbc.com…

Somewhere in Florida, the Man Behind This Nightmare-Inducing Video

Via the Village Voice Media wire, here’s Ed Muscare, aka “Uncle Ed,” who according to our friends in Kansas City is a former children’s show host and current registered sex offender in Florida (correction: see update below). Where, exactly, in Florida? Well, God, that’s the million dollar question, isn’t it?…

Bullet-Proof: Salesman Acquitted on Felony

Former Miramar Commissioner Fitzroy Salesman was acquitted this afternoon by a Broward County jury of aggravated assault, a felony charge that would have meant a minimum three years in prison. He was convicted on the misdemeanor charge of improperly displaying a firearm.Tastes bittersweet to me. As I said yesterday, following…

Gun Range: Probably the Worst Place to Execute an Arrest Warrant

That’s video from the scene of the worst police shooting in Florida this year. Now the governor-appointed Okaloosa County sheriff, Edward Spooner, is trying to defend his department’s decision to arrest a wife-beating weapons expert at a gun range. In an incident that appeared entirely avoidable, two deputies were killed…

America, Broward Feels Your Pain (and Takes a Cut)

Like any place else, Broward County has its share of conventional junkies, but our real addiction, it seems, is to the profits of the pain pill industry. If you have trouble wrangling a prescription in your home county or home state, Broward’s the place to go.The first article in the…

Cell-Out: Jenne Breaks Silence

Heads up, Broward County: Your ex-sheriff ex-con gave an interview to former Sun-Sentinel columnist Buddy Nevins that was posted on Broward Beat over the weekend. It’s a cream-puff interview, but whatever. Ken Jenne was convicted, served his time, and no one can doubt his regret is genuine. Besides, there’s enough…

A Crime So Stupid It’s Genius

When a crime happens, best to make a beeline for the motive. Who profited from the crime? Which is why, I fear, the Great Maracas Caper of 2009 may never be solved. It was a crime — fraud, I think — that seems to have had no motive. Maracas, the…

Can Wall Street Accused Get a Fair Trial?

Yes, we’re all furious about the Wall Street culture of deception and cheating that has pushed this country to the brink of economic collapse, but maybe it’s time to put down our torches and pitchforks so we can think this through. Or at least that’s the impulse I got after…

Pervy Moves Florida has not yet Outlawed

And now, on the Juice subject du jour, a quick note from the female perspective…Dear Sen. Aronberg,On behalf of woman all over Florida, I must thank you for proposing legislation that would make it illegal to use a mirror to look up our skirts. This eliminates one of the all-time…

Man and the Mirror: State’s Asking You to Change Your Ways

Considering South Florida’s love of all things kinky and Democrat, you’d have reason to expect a GOP-dominated legislature to be combing through our local police reports so they could A) figure out what weird sex stuff we’re up to; and B) pass laws against it.Yet this legislative session, the very…

Phraudsters Phrom Philly Phrolic in Phlorida

Another day, another Philadelphia man accused of committing fraud and enjoying his allegedly ill-gotten gains in sunny South Florida. Tony Young, a financial adviser in suburban Chester County, is accused of bilking investors out of $23 million, a portion of which he’s alleged to have used to buy this $2.3…

Meter Maid Unmoved by Apology

This is a photograph (click to enlarge) that tells a heart-breakingly tragic story. It is the picture of a single, doomed transaction between two human beings who may never meet, and though it shows only the mid-point of that drama, we fellow humans can picture vividly its beginning and end;…

White Power Leader in West Palm Denies Link to Pittsburgh Cop Killer

It seemed an awfully big coincidence: Richard Poplawski, who harbored suspicion toward a government he believed to be controlled by Jews and intent on snatching his guns, moved from his hometown Pittsburgh to Wellington in 2006, not far from the West Palm Beach home base of Stormfront.org, the white nationalist…

Still No Clarity for Senseless Death in Dania

Of all the violent episodes that have occurred in Broward County in the past few weeks, the one that most defied explanation was the Dania Beach murder of Matthew Lennon, of Miami, by his friend Joseph Blanco, who then committed suicide.Last we heard, the incident started when another friend had…