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MIAMI (CBS4) – Rachel Jeantel opens up about her friendship with Trayvon Martin, calling him a good and true friend. “He’s got an energy that makes you laugh, he’s real funny, and I like that in a person,” Jeantel said. “Trayvon never judged me, because I always had an under bite. It’s an under bite I need to get done. He never judged. He just said ‘oh, okay, that ain’t no problem’.”

The U.S. Justice Department’s long-awaited report finding excessive use of force by Miami police officers might not be a criminal indictment, but it reads like one. The findings, released last week after a 20-month investigation, depict a dysfunctional department with poor firearms training, tactics and supervision — along with sloppy internal investigations of police-involved shootings that often drag on for years with no discipline or accountability. Justice’s civil rights division, prodded into action by seven fatal police shootings of African-American men, found that the Miami Police Department had fully investigated only 24 of 33 shooting incidents from 2008 to 2011,...

Miami-Dade School Board member Carlos Curbelo threw his hat in the ring as a Republican candidate for Florida’s 26th Congressional District Tuesday. His family in tow, Curbelo made the announcement in his backyard in west Miami-Dade. The 26th Congressional District – which stretches from western Miami-Dade County across to Florida’s west coast and includes the Florida Keys – is currently represented by Democratic Congressman Joe Garcia, who handily defeated then-Republican congressman David Rivera last November. It was a slugfest campaign with charges of phony candidates and ballot rigging. Now, Garcia is plagued with an investigation of a former top aide...

Quietly at first, and now quite publicly, the city of Tampa has courted Cuba in hopes of becoming its future trading partner. Business owners in Tampa talk of how they’ll capitalize when the island opens up, and politicians make trips there and have come out against the embargo. Things are far different across the state in Miami. Elected officials there favor the trade embargo. Business leaders, fearful of retribution, rarely speak about future trade with the island nation. Miami may seem poised to benefit most when the embargo ends, with its close proximity and much larger Cuban-American population. There are...

NORTH BAY VILLAGE, Fla. (WSVN) -- Police are on the scene after the back section of a South Florida restaurant and bar collapsed into Biscayne Bay. Miami-Dade Fire Rescue received a call after reports of the back section of Shuckers Bar & Grill collapsed into Biscayne Bay on Thursday night.

Congressman Joe Garcia’s chief of staff abruptly resigned Friday after being implicated in a sophisticated scheme to manipulate last year’s primary elections by submitting hundreds of fraudulent absentee-ballot requests. Friday afternoon, Garcia said he had asked Jeffrey Garcia, no relation, for his resignation after the chief of staff — also the congressman’s top political strategist — took responsibility for the plot. Hours earlier, law enforcement investigators raided the homes of another of Joe Garcia’s employees and a former campaign aide in connection with an ongoing criminal investigation into the matter. “I’m shocked and disappointed about this,” Garcia, who said he...

FULL TITLE: Miami cannibal victim learning to play guitar as part of treatment a year after most of his face was chewed off in horrific attack A homeless man whose face was mostly chewed off in a horrific attack last year in Miami has learned to play guitar as he continues to receive treatment for his injuries. As the first anniversary of the attack nears, Ronald Poppo has spoken publicly for the first time. In a video released by hospital staff, Mr Poppo thanked all the people to have supported him through his difficult recovery. He said: 'I thank the...

Michael Steinbach, former head of the FBI’s counterterrorism division and now special agent in charge of Miami, told over 30 congressional staffers in March of 2012 that, contrary to the White House's classification, the bureau does not refer to the Fort Hood shooting as "workplace violence." As head of the FBI counterterrorism division, Steinbach oversaw the investigation into the mass murder at Texas Army base. Steinbach made this claim during an unclassified counterterrorism briefing on Capitol Hill.

The defeated North Miami mayoral candidate who claimed that Jesus Christ endorsed her now says that the city chose Lucifer over the son of God. In a post-election statement on her Facebook page, Anna Pierre questioned Tuesday's results, in which she finished last among seven candidates. She also re-affirmed her Christian faith.

Been doing some quick looks at the local news coverage....ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC..... Basically NOTHING on the murder of our people in Libya....about 30 seconds worth among all the stations...... How did YOUR stations do?

A Saudi family who “fled” their Sarasota area home weeks before 9/11 had “many connections” to “individuals associated with the terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001,” according to newly released FBI records. One partially declassified document, marked “secret,” lists three of those individuals and ties them to the Venice, Fla., flight school where suicide hijackers Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi trained. Accomplice Ziad Jarrah took flying lessons at another school a block away. Atta and al-Shehhi were at the controls of the jetliners that slammed into the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center, killing nearly 3,000 people. Jarrah was the...

Emma Anderson was kicked off of the Miami Metrorail train system after she was reprimanded for singing gospel music, yet refused to stop. The 82-year-old was booted off of the public transportation system by a security guard who reportedly wasn’t too gentle in his quest to remove her.

The U.S. Attorney's office in South Florida charged six people, including the imam of the oldest mosque in Miami, with supporting and financing the Pakistani Taliban. The men are suspected of giving $50,000 to the terrorist organization, according to the four-count indictment. Authorities claimed that Hafiz Muhammed Sher Ali Khan, the leader at the mosque, and his sons Irfan Khan and Izhar Khan were arrested Saturday morning. "Despite being an Imam, or spiritual leader, Hafiz Khan was by no means a man of peace," U.S. Attorney Wifredo A. Ferrer said in a statement. "Instead, as today's charges show, he acted...

<p>A Miami-Dade police officer was stabbed in the back and in the chest outside Dallas, Texas while transporting a prisoner back to Las Vegas, Dallas television station CBS 11 is reporting.</p> <p>A manhunt for the escaped prisoner is taking place.</p>

(CBS) MIAMI - Penelope Soto, the Florida teen who was jailed after flipping off a Miami-Dade judge, avoided a month behind bars Friday after she apologized to him in person, reports CBS Miami.

An investigation into Miami police officers’ on-duty conduct found six officers were ignoring 911 calls while instead kissing their girlfriends, shopping, and drinking coffee. One 911 call involved an unconscious five-month-old baby. Video footage shows Miami police officer Dario Socarras ignoring dispatch orders to save the child, while drinking coffee for nine minutes and lying to the dispatcher about being “en route”. Paramedics eventually reached the unconscious child, while Socarras never went – but still, the officer wrote in his daily report that he attended the scene. And Socarras is only one of six officers caught neglecting their duties: after...

The second of three recently scheduled Miami gun buyback events was held at an Overtown church Saturday -- with people turning everything from handguns to shotguns to assault rifles. Seventy-nine firearms were obtained during the four-hour buyback at St. John Baptist Church at 1328 NW Third Ave., police said. An AK-47 assault rifle that was turned in was among the weapons that officers were glad to see off the streets, police Sgt. Freddie Cruz said. “Here we have a perfect example of what we need to get off the streets: It's a sawed-off AK-47 with a 40-round clip,” Cruz said....

Machine gun fire from military helicopters flying over downtown Miami Fl

The media are not covering this story despite the FBI agent in the emails saying that most of the information has been confirmed. If the allegations are true Menendez could be prosecuted under the 2003 PROTECT ACT making travel and having sex with minors knowingly or not a federal offense with up to 30 years in prison. DOCUMENTS published online for the first time Thursday indicate that the FBI opened an inquiry into New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez on August 1, 2012, focusing on repeated trips he took to the Dominican Republic with longtime campaign contributor and Miami eye...

The Miami gun-show line stretched 200 people long. Many blamed President Barack Obama. This is what the president’s gun-control talk has wrought: long waits to get into gun shows, higher firearm and ammunition prices and more paranoia. The word “Obama” was frequently mumbled, muttered, hissed, cursed at Saturday’s Southern Classic Gun and Knife Show. “Obama” was a catch-all word, a gun-rights shibboleth of sorts, a no-longer-shocking swear, a conversation starter. To Calvin Hudson, a Miami Gardens resident bargain-hunting at the Miami-Dade fairgrounds firearms bazaar, the Obama-blaming was a sign people were being fooled into paying more in a firearms market...