Shootings hit close to home for some Miami-Dade teens

Juan Videa was supposed to be in class Monday at Booker T Washington Senior High, but he never made it to school.

Juan, 17, was walking to his bus stop in Bay Vista Park when someone fired more than 20 bullets, police said. Wounded, Juan was rushed to Ryder Trauma Center.

His shooting — following a weekend in which two other teens were shot and killed — feeds a growing movement to curb youth violence and gunplay that started nationally in December after the Newtown, Conn., massacre and locally after the apparently random shooting of Booker T freshman Aaron Willis.

“How do we get away from this culture of violence?” asked Booker T. Principal William Aristide, who says he learns “once or twice” a year that one of his students has been shot.

In Miami-Dade County, the threat of being gunned down is very real to those 18 and younger. Between the beginning of 2009 and the end of 2012, 99 kids were homicide victims in Miami-Dade, according to records compiled by the county’s Medical Examiner. That’s exactly triple the number reported by the Broward Medical Examiner.

Of the 99 Miami-Dade cases, 81 were the result of shootings. And close to half were students of Miami-Dade County public schools, according to Superintendent Alberto Carvalho, who began campaigning against youth violence after Aaron was shot Dec. 19 while riding his bike from a friend’s house in Wynwood at 9 p.m.

“I made a promise when I became superintendent that I would attend the funeral, a viewing, a burial for every single child who would die a violent death in Miami. I am tired,” Carvalho, superintendent since late 2008, said during a news conference on the first day back from winter break. “We’ve covered this one time too many. I’ve attended over 40 such events, and it’s time to stop.”

Carvalho, who days earlier had canvassed Allapattah with the family of Bryan Herrera, a Miami Jackson sophomore shot dead on his bicycle Dec. 22, worried that the issue would “die out as a result of time simply passing.”

That hasn’t happened, in part because kids keep getting shot.

Ten days later, Landon Kinsey, a sophomore at Miami Carol City, was shot dead in Miami Gardens. Then on Feb. 13, Orlando Gonzalez, 13, was shot in his home in Kendall and transported to Miami Children’s Hospital in critical condition.

Last weekend, Marquise Brunson, identified by WFOR-CBS4 as an Ace Academy student, and Dante Vilet, both 16, were shot and killed just days after Carlos Zuniga shot his son and daughter, ages 11 and 14.

And then Juan was shot at his bus stop, bringing attention back to Booker T High, one of several schools to mourn the murder of multiple students in the past few years. In that time, Booker T has lost at least two students: senior Alex Tillman, whose charred body was found near the FEC railroad tracks, and Anthony Smith, a Tornadoes linebacker fatally wounded during a 2009 mass shooting at an Overtown birthday bash.

As shootings have continued — more than 500 last year in Miami-Dade, according to WFOR — media attention has increased, as has uproar from communities damaged by gun violence. Pastors around Miami-Dade held news conferences, offered rewards for information and met with Miami Police, who announced in what they said was an unrelated move that they would enforce a rarely heeded county curfew for kids under 17.

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Possible grenade empties Broward sheriff’s building

A Broward sheriff’s office building in Pembroke Park was evacuated at 2 p.m. Friday after a woman walked in with what appeared to be a grenade.

Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Dani Moschella said the woman told officers she brought the grenade to the sheriff’s office at 3201 W. Hallandale Beach Blvd. to get rid of it safely.

“We don’t know yet if it’s real,” Moschella said. “The evacuation was as a precaution.”

The woman said the grenade had belonged to a relative who died.

A bomb squad sealed off the building to determine whether the grenade is real and contains explosive material, Moschella said.

No charges have been filed against the woman.

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Miami mothers fight cause of mental impairment

Almost from the beginning, Michele Kaplan knew something was amiss.

Her son Matthew’s childhood milestones – walking, talking – were delayed.

“We knew we had a developmental problem and after going to pediatricians and geneticists, he was finally diagnosed,’’ says Kaplan, 37, of Miami. “I don’t know what is scarier: not knowing what was wrong, or getting the diagnosis of such a rare syndrome.’’

Matthew, now 7, has Fragile X, a genetic syndrome that causes intellectual disability and is most commonly found in boys. The diagnosis sent Kaplan scrambling to seek treatment options and find other families in a similar position. She had little success. That scarcity of support and help in navigating the still-developing Fragile X world inspired Kaplan, along with another mother, to establish a foundation.

The Families for Fragile X foundation, now celebrating its fifth anniversary, has offered support for dozens of families with children diagnosed with the condition. To mark the anniversary, the non-profit foundation is hosting a fundraiser 5K trail run/walk Saturday at Virginia Key along with other activities for children.

“For parents dealing with Fragile X, it is difficult and a very long road. Often, they have already had concerns when the child is, say, 14 or 15 months, when they are already experiencing delays, but in so many cases, they are not diagnosed until they are 3 years old,’’ said Dr. Deborah Barbouth, director of the South Florida Fragile X Clinic, which currently serves about 60 families. “We know through research that early intervention can really help which is why education is so important.’’

Fragile X is the most common inherited cause of intellectual disability and the leading genetic cause of autism. An estimated 1 in 4,000 males and 1 in 8,000 females have the condition. Behaviors and characteristics include developmental delays, anxiety and hyperactivity, elongated faces and protruding ears.

So far, the foundation has raised more than $500,000 to aid in medical research and education, some of which benefits the South Florida Fragile X clinic, part of the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine. The foundation has provided 12 grants to needy families for evaluations at the clinic – each ranging from $500 to $2,500 -- one of first critical steps to addressing the condition. It has also sponsored educational conferences and pushed for early Fragile X screening.

“Fragile X is overwhelming in the sense that your world changes as you try to deal with the behavioral issues. That’s why it’s so important to have a strong support system,’’ said Kaplan, a wife and mother of three children. “We want to make it as easy as possible for families facing Fragile X.’’

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More misconduct allegations arise at Citizens

TALLAHASSEE --
In an attempt to clear its name after a series of scandals involving corporate misconduct and improper spending, Citizens Property Insurance Corp. released a laundry list of 474 internal complaints Wednesday.

While Citizens released the documents to prove that it has properly handled allegations of misconduct in recent years, the move also shined an embarrassing light on much of the company’s internal dirty laundry. The list of complaints reads like a trove of office sex affairs, corporate corruption, fraud, workplace pornography, discrimination, theft and other allegations. In at least one case, a Citizens employee swiped his corporate credit card at a strip club. Names of employees were not disclosed. But law enforcement authorities were alerted in cases of possible alleged criminal activity.

“This review is an important piece of Citizens’ ongoing efforts to strengthen internal policies to ensure that our employees are held to the highest standards of corporate integrity,” said company president Barry Gilway, in a statement. The company stated that “all complaints were addressed and corrective action taken in accordance with Citizens’ policies in place at the time.”

The release of the complaint information is the latest dustup for Citizens, which is still reeling from revelations about lavish corporate spending, large raises for executives and various allegations of impropriety.

Gilway has said that he was immediately hit with news of various corporate scandals when he joined the company last June. After taking what he called “a bashing in the press,” Gilway asked Citizens’ Internal Auditor, Joe Martins, to look over the company’s handling of misconduct allegations. Martins — who disbanded the company’s Corporate Integrity Office and gutted one of its most scathing reports — found that Citizens had handled internal complaints well over the last five years.

“Where we found weaknesses, we are making necessary improvements to strengthen our complaints and disciplinary procedures,” Martins said in a statement. Many of the complaints involved run-of-the-mill employee grievances, such as a supervisor “wearing too much cologne.”

But others involved more serious allegations, including fraud and improper gifts from vendors who do business with Citizens, a multibillion-dollar company backed by state taxpayers.

The release comes as Citizens is looking to reform itself after a series of scandals. Over the past year, the Herald/Times has documented evidence of luxurious business trips, drunken exploits on company retreats, large raises for executives and the abrupt firing of four internal investigators. Many of the misconduct allegations surfaced as Citizens was raising rates on homeowners and reducing coverage.

Before it was disbanded, the Office of Corporate Integrity was responsible for investigating many of the complaints listed in Wednesday’s document release.

The abrupt firing of the OCI investigators — who had recently discovered evidence of misconduct by Citizens’ highest executives — led to allegations that the company was seeking to cover up the group’s findings. In addition to huge severance packages for disgraced executives, the investigators found that Citizens had mishandled several internal complaints and shown favoritism to some employees, including top execs.

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Woman dies during Key Biscayne scuba dive excursion

A “disturbing” accident Sunday left one scuba diver dead and others with many questions about how that could have happened.

Forty-year-old Hua Liu was part of an expedition off Key Biscayne, about three nautical miles off Bill Baggs Cape, on the vessel BigCom Ocean.

There were about 40 divers on board, and all were instructed to stay with their “diving buddy” during the length of the dive, and never to leave him or her alone.

Panic set in when the group realized it was one diver short during a “roll call” when it was time to head back ashore.

Immediately, they began to conduct a search and called the Coast Guard at about 3:30 p.m.

The Coast Guard “immediately took action,” said Commander Darren Caprara, who is the chief of response for Coast Guard sector Miami and was supervising the case. They put out a broadcast, diverted a 45-foot Coast Guard boat that was headed to another location, called air station Miami to get a helicopter, brought in an auxiliary special team that does routine patrols and a 110-foot Coast Guard cover.

Within about 30 minutes of searching, the team on the diving vessel found Liu’s buoyancy control device (BCD), which is used to help a diver float, and tank.

“That’s the point when we became very concerned and more serious,” said Jaclyn Hesse, an experienced diver who was aboard. “It’s difficult to stay afloat without that for a long time.”

In tandem with the Coast Guard, which Hesse estimated arrived about 20 minutes after being called, the divers continued to search for Liu. Two dive masters from the dive vessel were towed from the boat so they could search the ocean floor. (The Coast Guard in Miami does not have divers who perform underwater rescue missions, Caprara said).

When they had been searching for about 40 minutes, a dive master raised her hand to tell the boat to stop. She dived to the bottom and pulled up Liu, who was still wearing her weighted scuba diving belt. “She was blue when they pulled her up,” Hesse said.

The Coast Guard staff then verbally instructed the dive master to pull Liu’s body aboard the diving vessel. Caprara said that is because the diving vessel was lower to the water and closer.

“Whenever you have a person in the water, particularly one who might be injured or hurt, the priority is to get that person safely out of the water and onto a stable platform where you can give medical care,” he said. “The dive vessel had a spacious open back deck and a low-to-the-water platform.”

At that point, the dive masters aboard began to give Liu CPR.

But it was too late.

The whole experience was “terrible,” Hesse said. Besides Liu’s tragic death, “There were children on board the vessel, and they were fully aware of what was happening,” she said.

In the wake of the incident, few details have been released about the circumstances leading to Liu’s death.

The Miami-Dade police department, which handled the case, said it is awaiting autopsy results, and it is not “readily apparent” if there should be reason to suspect foul play.

“Dive rules state you need to go where your buddy goes,” Hesse said. “There was something really wrong happening.”

Caprara also said further investigation is necessary to determine more specifically what happened during Liu’s dive.

“I can’t speak to that,” he said. “Something unfortunate happened.”

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Crist to speak at Hollywood Chamber luncheon

Former Gov. Charlie Crist will be the keynote speaker at the Greater Hollywood Chamber of Commerce’s Business Leaders Awards Luncheon Friday.

The event recognizes business leaders and companies who raise the bar their support of the Hollywood Business Community.

The awards luncheon will also include the swearing of the 2013 board of directors.

Registration begins at 11:30 a.m. and the award program will start at noon at the Westin Diplomat Resort and Spa, ADDRESS.

Ticket prices are $75 for chamber members; $100 for others. For more information, call 954-923-4000 or visit www.hollywoodchamber.org.

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Miami security guard wounded in stabbing

A security guard was stabbed Sunday afternoon after an altercation with an unnamed subject.

Miami-Dade Police says the stabbing occurred at 5185 NW 29th Ave.

The subject is currently in custody and the security guard was transported to Ryder Trauma Center.

His condition is unknown.

This article will be updated as more information becomes available.

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Teen dead after Liberty City shooting

Miami Police were investigating the murder of a male teenager in Liberty City early Saturday.

Marquis Bronson, 16, was shot near the intersection of 62nd Street and NW 11Tth Avenue, according to Miami Herald news partner CBS 4.

He was taken to Ryder Trauma Center at Jackson Memorial Hospital, where he was later pronounced dead.

This post will be updated as more information becomes available.

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30-slip marina opens in Hallandale Beach

Boat owners looking to store their vessel now have a new option.

On Friday, Hallandale Beach welcomed its new $1.2 million, 30-slip marina at 101 Three Islands Blvd.

The public marina, which was paid for by the city, the Broward Boating Improvement Program and the Florida Inland Navigational District, offers 26 slips for annual rental, three for daily use and one for the Hallandale Beach Police Marine Unit.

Located midway between the Haulover Inlet and the inlet at Port Everglades, the marina is the southern-most public dockage in Broward County.

The cost for docking a boat — the marina can accommodate vessels from 20 feet to 60 feet and a maximum beam of 15 feet — is $15 per foot, per month, on an annual basis and $1.75 per foot, per day for the three transient slips. The fee includes electricity, water and Intranet Wi-Fi. A pump-out facility is available for use at an additional cost.

For more information on the Hallandale Beach City Marina, visit the Hallandale Beach Parks and Recreation Department page at www.cohb.org, or call 954-457-1653.

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Boil water order in Miami Lakes after waterline break

Residents of multi-family apartment buildings in Miami Lakes Thursday night were advised to boil their water until further notice.

Town officials said during a preventative maintenance on a fire hydrant earlier in the day, a water pipe ruptured in the area of Northwest 64 Avenue and Miami Lakeway North.

Miami-Dade Water and Sewer Department crews are on site to make repairs.

For now, a localized boil water order is being issued for two nearby multi-family apartment buildings.

For additional information, visit www.miamidade.gov/water.

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Missed flight connections at MIA blamed on understaffed border and customs officials

For a picture of the nation’s border struggles, look at the long lines and understaffed international-passenger checkpoints at Miami International Airport.

Up to 1,000 passengers in a single day have missed connecting flights at the airport — the busiest in the nation for international flights — because they’re held up at the Customs and Border Protection facility.

And the problem could get even worse next month because of looming federal budget cuts, U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Wednesday after visiting the airport.

“Everything we are trying to do here — the additional staffing, overtime, technology…. will come to a screeching halt,” Napolitano said.

“It means not adding Customs officers, we’re going to be starting to furlough Customs officers,” she said. “Not adding overtime to cover peak periods, but eliminating overtime.”

If Congress comes up with a deal to avoid the cuts — under the so-called sequester — the agency either needs to shift resources to properly staff its Miami facility or get more money to hire more officers. One solution for getting more cash: Tapping Miami-Dade taxpayers to help foot the bill.

Absent a Congressional deal, however, Napolitano also warned that Transportation Security Administration officers might be furloughed as well, meaning travelers should arrive at busy airports like MIA an hour early and citizens re-entering the United States could wind up waiting twice as long to get back in the country.

U.S. Rep. Joe Garcia, a Miami Democrat, toured the airport with Napolitano and said earlier that the situation at the airport encapsulates what’s wrong with Congress as well as the entire immigration system.

“We’re having a big debate over fixing our borders in Mexico, but we can’t even get a rich Argentinian businessman through Customs on time because we don’t have the proper staffing,” Garcia said before the press conference.

Garcia noted that up to half of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States overstayed their visas and probably flew into the country — they didn’t cross the U.S.-Mexico border.

“We have to focus on a broader solution,” Garcia said.

While he toured the airport with Napolitano and U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Garcia noted that half of the 72 booths at the international-passenger checkpoint were unstaffed on Wednesday.

U.S. Rep. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Miami, joined the tour at the airport, but she slipped away before cameras caught her with the Democrats. U.S. Rep. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, also a Miami Republican, met Napolitano earlier Wednesday at Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale but couldn’t make the airport tour because he had engagements in the Naples area. Diaz-Balart called for more officers in South Florida.

After touring the facilities Wednesday, Napolitano pointed out that the lines are better now than in the past.

Almost as soon as the new $180 million facility opened in July, it was understaffed and plagued with long lines.

Gov. Rick Scott wrote to Napolitano in September and again on Wednesday, asking for more Customs and Border Protection staff. He said the long lines and missed flights were bad for Florida’s reputation and therefore its bottom line.

“CBP has not been able to meet the necessary staffing numbers in the new facility. As a result, customers, often numbering well over 1,000 daily, and their baggage are misconnected and must be re-booked on later flights, many leaving the next day,” Scott wrote.

During one 30-day study in February 2012, nearly 5,000 American Airlines customers missed their connecting flights as a direct result of delays in CBP processing.

Napolitano said she was able to provide a few more staff at peak times and that it helped alleviate some of the long lines.

The airport’s director, Jose Abreu, said wait times are down as are the incidence of missed flights. But up to 700 people daily can miss flights because they’re held up in lines, waiting to be processed by border officers.

To further shorten lines, Napolitano said, her agency would like to increase a pre-screening program for low-risk international travelers and hire more border officers in cooperation with local officials.

Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez, who met with Napolitano and the congressional members, said he’d be willing to try to pitch in county money to help.

Wasserman Schultz, the Democratic National Committee chairwoman, said she and the other South Florida congressional members will try to pass legislation giving local governments the ability to help underwrite the costs of federal border officers.

But, she said, the looming federal budget cuts need to be handled quickly.

“Deep cuts to Customs and Border Protection operations will mean less staffing and even more frustrated passengers,” she said.

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Miami imam accused of aiding Taliban declares innocence at federal trial

An elderly Miami imam accused of contributing money to the Pakistani Taliban declared his innocence from the witness stand in federal court Tuesday, saying he despises the U.S.-designated terrorist organization.

Hafiz Khan, testifying during his trial in his native Pashto language through an interpreter, said the money he sent from Miami to Pakistan was meant for his family and a religious school known as a madrassa that he founded in the Swat Valley region decades ago.

Khan, 77, the frail former leader of the Flagler Mosque in Miami, tried to portray himself as a naturalized U.S. citizen who embraced his new country — contrary to the fiery anti-American and anti-Pakistan government figure captured on secret FBI recordings of his phone conversations before his arrest in 2011.

“We are innocent [of] these accusations,” Khan testified, speaking for himself and other family members charged in the material-support terrorism case.

Asked by one of his defense attorneys whether his madrassa for boys and girls catered to Taliban fighters, Khan said: “We have no connection to them whatsoever. We hate them.”

Later, Khan testified he was “totally against” the Taliban’s use of violence, such as beheadings and the destruction of property to impose extreme Islamic, or Sharia, law on people.

Khan also sought to clarify that his anti-Pakistan rhetoric was provoked by the government’s shutting down of his madrassa for safety concerns during a violent conflict with the Taliban in 2009.

In one FBI-recorded phone conversation, Khan was quoted saying: “They are such big motherf---ers for shutting down the education for the little kids.”

On the witness stand, he testified that if the United States took over Pakistan, “it would be good, because there would be law.”

Khan, who moved with his family to the United States in 1994, has been on trial since early January on four charges of providing material support to a terrorist organization. If convicted, he faces up to 15 years in prison on each count.

The high-profile case has presented problems for prosecutors, who dropped charges against one of Khan’s sons for lack of evidence. U.S. District Judge Robert Scola also dismissed charges against another son, a Muslim cleric from Broward, during trial.

Prosecutors are expected to cross-examine Khan Wednesday.

His testimony came exactly one week after his defense team tried to take direct testimony from 11 witnesses in an Islamabad hotel, by transmitting the examination to the Miami courtroom through an Internet connection that mysteriously went silent in Pakistan. The signal was cut off, either because of a technical glitch or the Pakistan government’s intervention, during the testimony of a suspected Taliban soldier.

A suspected Taliban fighter named Noor Mohammed, who described himself as a street vendor with five children, had testified, “I never fought for the Taliban,” before the feed went dead.

He followed a Pakistani shopkeeper, Ali Rehman, a co-defendant in the Miami indictment against Khan. Rehman testified that he and Hafiz Khan did not supply thousands of dollars to the Taliban to aid its terrorist mission against U.S. interests overseas — that the money instead went to Khan’s relatives living in the Swat Valley.

The FBI opened the investigation after U.S. banks reported suspicious financial transactions between Khan’s accounts in the United States and Pakistan starting in spring 2008. With that evidence, authorities obtained a warrant to wiretap Khan’s phone conversations with relatives and associates here and in Pakistan. A confidential government informant was also deployed.

According to an indictment, Khan and to a lesser extent other Khan family members sent roughly $50,000 to the Taliban between 2008 and 2010.

The indictment said the family’s money helped back the Taliban’s purchase of guns and other resources for assaults on the Pakistan government and U.S. interests, including bombing attacks killing dozens of people in the Swat Valley and the attempted bombing in New York City’s Times Square.

The indictment does not tie Khan-family money to any specific acts of terrorism. But in recorded phone conversations, Khan praised the 2010 Times Square bombing plot as well as al Qaeda — and called for a global jihad.

Khan supported not only attacks on Pakistani officials and soldiers, but also civilians who backed the Pakistan government, according to the recordings.

In one recorded conversation, Khan complained: “Doesn’t one of them have the guts to do a suicide attack so they can teach them a lesson?”

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Miami civilian panel to decide on police shooting of unarmed man

The city of Miami’s civilian oversight agency will decide on Tuesday whether to exonerate the Miami police officer who shot and killed an unarmed man, DeCarlos Moore, in 2010.

The agency’s independent counsel has determined that Officer Joseph Marin’s use of deadly force was reasonable and did not violate city policy.

But community activists believe the Civilian Investigative Panel’s investigation is flawed, and say members of the public have been deliberately blocked from voicing their concerns. They plan to challenge the investigation’s findings on Tuesday.

“The CIP has failed to take a real and serious look at the DeCarlos Moore shooting,” said Nathaniel Wilcox, executive director of People United to Lead the Struggle for Equality, the community group known as PULSE. “Instead of protecting the community, they’ve been more concerned about protecting the police department.”

Marin has already been cleared of wrongdoing by state prosecutors. He was one of seven Miami police officers who fatally shot black men in 2010 and 2011. Five of the men, including Moore, were unarmed.

In 2011, a coalition of community groups including PULSE, the ACLU and the NAACP called on the Civilian Investigative Panel to conduct an independent review of each case. The CIP’s complaints subcommittee took up the Moore shooting earlier this month. The full panel will hear the case on Tuesday.

Jeanne Baker, who chairs the Miami ACLU police practices committee, said the coalition tried to distribute its own report on the Moore shooting to the 13-member civilian panel in advance of Tuesday’s meeting. The coalition also asked for the opportunity to address the panel before the vote.

But both requests were denied by CIP Chairman Thomas Cobitz.

“The ACLU is essentially being stonewalled,” Baker said.

Cobitz said the agenda was too long to include the additional documents, and that Baker and other members of the coalition will be able to speak during the public comment part of the meeting, which comes after the vote.

“We do listen to the coalition,” Cobitz said, noting that members have spoken on the issue at prior CIP hearings. “We know their concerns. But our job is to look at the facts and evaluate things using a procedure. We can’t just change our procedure because our friends want us to.”

Marin was a rookie officer when he shot and killed Moore. On the night of July 5, Marin and his field-trainings officer, Vionna Brown-Williams, pulled up behind Moore’s white Honda Accord on Northwest First Place in Overtown and ran the license plate through a national database. The computer said the vehicle might be stolen.

Before the officers could conduct a traffic stop, Moore, 36, pulled over and got out of his car, according to the CIP investigation. The officers got out of their patrol car and ordered Moore to put his hands up.

“Suddenly, and without explication, [Moore] turned away from Officer Marin and began hurriedly walking or running toward the drivers’ door of the Honda,” the CIP report concluded. “Mr. Moore reached into the drivers’ door as if to retrieve something… As Mr. Moore emerged, Officer Marin saw a shiny, metallic object in Mr. Moore’s hand.”

Marin fired a single bullet to the head, killing Moore.

Investigators later determined that the metallic object was a clump of rock cocaine wrapped in aluminum foil. Further complicating matters, the computer system had made a mistake: Moore’s car was not stolen.

In 2011, Miami-Dade state prosecutors concluded that Marin was justified in using lethal force.

“After a thorough review of all the facts, evidence and witness statements and studiously examining existing Florida statutes, it is our conclusion that the shooting death of DeCarlos Moore did not involve any criminal violation of Florida law,” Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said at the time.

But family members and community activists were dissatisfied with the findings, and called on the CIP to conduct an independent investigation.

Baker, of the ACLU, said she was disappointed with the CIP investigation because it did not address whether Marin had followed proper procedure in the events leading up to the shooting. She said the analysis also fails to address whether Marin had adhered to the department’s use-of-force policy.

“There is no indication in the recommendation that the CIP complaints committee has looked at the policy and procedure violations that we believe need investigation,” she said.

Cobitz said he did not doubt that Marin followed protocol.

“Was it reasonable for a police officer to want to question someone driving a vehicle that appeared to be stolen? Absolutely,” he said.

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Plaque at Little River Post Office to honor Miami civil rights activist

A dedication ceremony to honor late civil rights activist Jesse J. McCrary, Jr. will take place Friday at the Little River Post Office..

Congresswoman Frederica S. Wilson and Area Vice President Jo Ann Feindt will be in attendance at the 2 p.m. event at the post office at the branch at 140 NE 84th St.

The public is invited to attend ceremony where a plaque honoring McCrary will be installed in the Post Office lobby.

McCray was born in 1937 in Blitchton, Florida, the son of a Baptist preacher. He eventually went on to attend FAMU, where he was a civil rights activist, organizing sit-ins in Tallahassee before graduating with a law degree.

He became the first African-American member of the Florida Cabinet since the end of Reconstruction. He was also Florida’s first assistant Attorney General.

He returned to private practice in 1979 and was active in the community in the 1980s and 1990s.

McCrary died in 2007.

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Hard road, cheap pay, for South Florida school bus drivers

If you think driving a car with a couple of children fussing and fidgeting in the back seat can be distracting, consider the plight of school bus drivers.

They maneuver a bulky, boxy vehicle through busy streets while shouldering responsibility for dozens of otherwise unsupervised students.

It’s a full-time job with irregular hours. The pay? Generally less than $20,000.

At a time when the state is looking to ramp-up security in schools, some point out school buses have not been a part of the conversation.

In Miami-Dade, Florida’s largest school district, which has more than 1,300 drivers, none of the school buses have security cameras, a situation that was underscored not long ago when a 15-year-old student brought a loaded gun onto a bus and it accidentally discharged, hitting a 13-year-old in the neck, killing her.

In New York City, where about 9,000 school bus drivers recently went on strike, close to $7,000 is spent annually for each student passenger. Miami-Dade, the nation’s fourth-largest school district, spends about $1,000 for each school bus passenger.

Parents like Robin Godby of Pembroke Pines say school bus drivers should just be in charge of driving students safely — that there ought to be an aide on board watching students to make sure they’re behaving and are safe.

“I don’t think they get the support,” Godby said of bus drivers. “They have to deal with kids who have disciplinary problems and they have to drive a vehicle.”

She knows what it’s like to try to discipline her two daughters from the driver’s seat.

“It drives me nuts,” Godby said. “Especially if they start fighting or bickering. It’s distracting.”

School bus drivers in Florida’s larger districts can have close to 90 students behind them.

Ronda Martin, with the Office of Labor Relations for Miami-Dade public schools, says bus drivers are paid for the 191 days when students are in school. But she says many of the drivers work overtime and weekends to earn extra money.

“I try to do overtime at least every day, five days a week,” said Sharayne Milton, a school bus driver for Miami-Dade schools. “And if they want me to work on the weekend, I will.”

Milton takes students on field trips and waits to transport students who have after-school sports and activities. Her day starts at 4 a.m. and can end at 10:30 p.m., with about four unpaid hours in between while students are in class.

In Miami-Dade, about 75 percent of school bus drivers are female, which can make it difficult to discipline older, male students.

When fits fly

Driver Gwendolyn Tillman says she won’t get in between fighting students.

“Usually if there are some other guys on the bus and the guys have respect for the bus drivers, the other young men on the bus will pull them apart,” Tillman said.

If nobody pulls the kids apart, bus drivers are instructed to call the district dispatcher — and not the police.

“Our drivers do not take actions against individual students,” said Jerry Klein, who is in charge of school transportation in Miami-Dade County.

“There is a process for them to fill out a report and then the schools deal with it like any other misbehavior in the schools.”

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Charlie Crist's wife loses custody of two teenage daughters

The ex-husband of former First Lady Carole Crist has been granted full custody of their two daughters, after alleging that she abandoned them and hasn’t returned messages in nearly two years.

“She’s completely abandoned them,” Todd Rome said of his former wife of 14 years in a brief telephone interview Friday.

He said Mrs. Crist, married for four years to former Gov. Charlie Crist, has not seen or spoken to her 14- and 16-year-old daughters since June 8, 2011, and that even simple tasks like getting her signature on documents has become a challenge.

Mrs. Crist and ex-husband Rome had joint custody until Feb. 1, when a family court judge in New York granted him temporary full custody. Rome said he may seek full custody permanently.

“She probably will not fight it, because she didn’t fight this one,’’ he said.

Neither Charlie nor Carole Crist could be reached for comment Friday, and a local lawyer for Mrs. Crist said they would have no comment.

“This is a domestic situation, which is private,” said Sam Heller, her lawyer. “Unfortunately, Mr. Rome has been untruthful throughout this process.”

The court records in New York are not public record, and Rome, CEO of Blue Star Jets in Manhattan, declined to provide a copy of the custody order. He did, however, read the judgement of the phone to the New Times in South Florida, which first reported the ruling.

“The children’s needs haven’t been met,’’ Rome’s New York lawyer, Mark Heller, told the New Times. “She won’t answer calls. Her lawyers won’t answer calls. And we had no choice but go to family court.”

Reached by phone as he was driving with his daughters, Rome said he has no explanation for why Mrs. Crist, 43, cut off contact with his daughters. He then passed the phone to his wife of four-plus years, Vanessa Rome.

“Anything that needs a co-parent signature becomes a complete ordeal, because she doesn’t answer,’’ Mrs. Rome said of Mrs. Crist. Mrs. Crist used to visit her daughters every other weekend in New York City.

Mrs. Rome said Mrs. Crist had no patience for the girls any time they complained about something.

“She doesn’t like to discuss anything or be called out, so if they say anything that rocks the boat she’ll say, 'Okay, bye. I have to go,’ and hang up.”

The former governor has in the past spoken warmly of his stepdaughters — he called them “our children” in 2009 — but Mrs. Rome said “he wanted no part of them.” When in Florida during 2010, the girls constantly found themselves bored at political fundraising events with no one to talk to. Mr. Crist, she said, also had no tolerance for any hint of unpleasant teen behavior.

“He would say, 'I’m not coming to dinner with you with that attitude,’” she said. “Often they were left alone in the hotel room to order room service.”

Mr. Rome has been outspoken in his criticism of his ex-wife’s parenting and in 2011 sued her for failing to pay support. The New York Post wrote about one late-2011 court hearing attended by the Crists. The Post quoted a judge noting that their divorce agreement requires no child support for the daughters living in Manhattan and, “I also can’t make her visit her children.”

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Dolphins take stadium pitch to Miami Gardens

The Miami Dolphins took their Sun Life Stadium renovations pitch on the road Thursday, highlighting support from a county commissioner and the mayor of Miami Gardens, the team’s hometown for 26 years.

The politicians’ backing carries weight in the city that perhaps knows the Dolphins best.

But that neighborly history also has made some people in Miami Gardens skeptical about the team’s promises of economic benefits from the planned $400 million in renovations, about of half of which would be funded by taxes.

Miami-Dade Commissioner Barbara Jordan, Miami Gardens Mayor Oliver Gilbert and Dolphins CEO Mike Dee stressed that upgrading the stadium to attract more international soccer games and concerts during the football offseason would employ more locals, bring customers to the city’s shops and restaurants, and spur development on vacant parcels nearby.

“When people come to a Super Bowl or a national championship in Miami Gardens, they eat on Brickell, and they sleep on South Beach. And they shop in our stores. They support our businesses,” Gilbert said. “That’s what this is about.”

He called the Dolphins “our largest taxpayer and a vital community partner.” The team sponsors some of the city’s biggest events, including the annual Jazz in the Gardens festival.

But that has not done much to assuage the concerns of others in the city, who say Miami Gardens has received little payoff from being home to the stadium.

“I’m a Dolphins fan, but I have to say, very honestly, there has not been an incredible windfall to this community,” said former City Councilman André Williams.

Williams said the city should draw up a marketing plan to lure sports fans and event-goers to nearby businesses, to ensure that any deal to receive county taxes makes sense.

The Dolphins’ proposed financing plan relies on a new annual $3 million state subsidy and a hike of county mainland hotel taxes to 7 percent from 6 percent.

The state money could go instead to public services, Jordan acknowledged Thursday.

“Those dollars do go to schools, and to roads and highways,” she said. But other teams receive state subsidies from sales-tax revenue they help generate, and the Dolphins deserve more of that money, she added.

“It’s bringing our money back to our community — I don’t see a problem with that,” she said.

On Monday, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez, whom commissioners tasked with negotiating with the team, announced that the Dolphins had reversed their position and agreed to put a potential deal for tax dollars to a public vote — before May 22, when NFL owners will award the 2016 and ’17 Super Bowls.

As part of its campaign to drum up support, the team held Thursday’s news conference at the Betty T. Ferguson Recreational Complex in Miami Gardens, down the street from the stadium.

Dolphins players and coaches sometimes volunteer at the complex, Jordan said. But there was irony to the location: Ferguson, a former county commissioner, burst onto the political scene leading the opposition to the stadium.

Ten-year-old Miami Gardens, the county’s third-largest city, didn’t exist at the time. Instead, Ferguson rallied residents from the Crestview and Rolling Oaks communities. A homeowners association filed a racial discrimination lawsuit against the county, arguing building the facility would break up middle-class black neighborhoods.

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Miami-Dade’s airport and seaport thriving, directors say

At PortMiami, the $1 billion port tunnel project that connects the mainland to Dodge Island is on time and on budget, several new cruise ships will soon call the port home, and the deep dredging at Government Cut means the port will soon be able to support the huge vessels that will cruise through the new Panama Canal.

Miami International Airport, meanwhile, has undergone a $6.3 billion overhaul, completed a 72-lane Customs and immigration facility designed to speed up passenger traffic to connecting flights, and could soon embark on a massive mixed-use project dubbed Airport City.

Those and other improvements were highlighted Wednesday during the annual “state of the ports’’ luncheon, a two-hour gathering of nearly 1,100 people at the Miami Airport Convention Center.

“There has never been a more exciting time at Miami International Airport than right now,” said Airport Director Jose Abreu.

Said Port Miami Director Bill Johnson: “2012 was a very good year, but looking ahead — and I like to look ahead — I can tell you that we are well positioned to continue our successes.”

Johnson credited PortMiami with helping create 207,000 jobs last year. Abreu said MIA broke a traffic record last year with 39.5 million passengers.

Abreu was hired in 2005 to turn around the limping airport renovation project. His last day with the county is March 31. He’s taking a consulting job with Pennsylvania-based construction and engineering company that has a Miami office.

“At the end of the day I’m a civil engineer,” he said. “They brought me in there to finish the capital improvement project, and we did.”

Despite all the cheerleading, not everything at Miami-Dade’s ports is hunky-dory.

Cargo freight at PortMiami has seen only modest gains since the economy tanked in 2008. There’s still the threat of a union strike that could cripple cargo movement across the country, and the port’s largest passenger cruise client, Carnival Cruise Lines, has had three on-board ship fires — including one this week — that have left vessels stranded at sea in recent years.

At the airport, despite the completion of the $180 million state-of-the-art immigration and Customs facility at the North Terminal, Abreu has been arguing with the feds about a lack of personnel. The airport director said he was promised enough staff to operate the 72 lanes, but only has enough workers to operate half that number.

“People are still missing connections; it’s an issue,” he said.

Few doubt that the proposed Airport City would make a great addition to MIA. The $827 million, 41-acre project would let visitors shop, eat, play, and work all within a short ride on the airport’s new MIA Mover. But politics could get in the way.

That’s because Odebrecht USA — the developer on the project — is a subsidiary of a Brazilian engineering-and-construction conglomerate that has another affiliate doing work in the Port of Mariel. That prompted local lawmakers to sponsor state legislation last year that would halt state and local governments from hiring firms whose affiliates work in Cuba.

The law was found unconstitutional, but the state is appealing.

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MIA director to unveil Airport City project at annual speech

The futuristic plan for Miami International Airport envisions newly arrived visitors checking in at a four-star hotel to relax at a pool, corporate executives hopping onto a people mover to meet at a business center minutes away, and locals crossing the street from the terminal to pick up Fido at the pet spa.

And the airport wouldn’t pay a cent to build any of it.

Instead, a private developer, Odebrecht USA, would finance the $512 million project. In return, Odebrecht would run the new facilities for half a century, paying rent and a percentage of revenues to the county.

This is Airport City, a massive project — in the works for nearly five years — intended to create new funding sources for the airport by turning MIA into a travel destination itself.

On Wednesday, Miami-Dade Aviation Director José Abreu will announce at the annual “state of the ports” speech, delivered with PortMiami Director Bill Johnson, that, three years after the county selected Odebrecht’s bid for the project, Airport City will come before county commissioners for approval next month.

“This can be the future,” Abreu said in an interview, calling Airport City “essential for us to be able to move forward.”

The reason: The more money the county-owned airport makes from non-aviation sources such as concessions, the lower the landing fees and other charges have to be paid by the airlines that bear the financial burden of operating MIA. During Odebrecht’s 40-year agreement with the county, with an option to renew for 10 more years, the airport could receive nearly $580 million in operating revenues.

“The more business we get, the more the airport gets,” said Gilberto Neves, president and CEO of Odebrecht. The company approached the county with the Airport City idea more than four years ago. Miami-Dade later put the project out for bids, and Odebrecht won.

Airport City would represent a capstone of sorts for MIA, which has spent about $6.3 billion and more than a decade — partly because of delays, cost overruns and, in some cases, corruption — expanding. The airport’s chief contractor: Odebrecht, which, as part of a joint venture with Parsons, upgraded the North Terminal, built a new South Terminal and put up the rails for the MIA Mover train that connects the airport Metrorail station to the terminal.

For Abreu, who was hired in 2005 to take control of the troubled capital-improvements program, launching an airport city — like the ones that exist in places such as Beijing, Frankfurt and Dallas/Fort Worth — is part of the legacy he hopes to leave when he retires at the end of March.

“The great thing about it is, it doesn’t hit our books” to develop the project, Abreu said. “There’s no downside.”

As part of the project, Odebrecht , which is working on a $4 billion mixed-use Rio de Janeiro port redevelopment project known as “Porto Maravilha,” would make the investment — and take on the risk — to develop, in phases, 41 acres east of the airport’s terminals and parking garages.

The county would retain ownership of the land, and the assets would revert to Miami-Dade at the end of Odebrecht’s agreement.

The project is divided into three parcels:

• A $359 million business center, with corporate offices, meeting space, a hotel and a new station for the MIA Mover train;

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First Lady Michelle Obama invites 102-year-old North Miami woman to State of Union speech

WASHINGTON --
At age 102, it's possible Desaline Victor is the oldest guest ever to attend a State of the Union address.

But the North Miami woman, known as "Granny" among the city’s Haitian community, was chosen less for her age than what she signifies.

As a naturalized U.S. citizen who waited for more than three hours to cast her ballot on Nov. 6, Victor, says the White House represents what President Barack Obama wants to highlight most in his second term. So Victor will sit in the First Lady’s box, along with military families, people who are championing immigration reform, and victims of gun reform.

"I know I’m going to sit with the president’s wife. I did not think I would get here," she said. "I am proud."

As an immigrant, former farm worker, and respected elder and minority from one of the poorest parts of South Florida, Victor and others like her stand to benefit most from the policies the president will discuss during his speech, say White House officials.

Victor came to the attention of the White House through the Advancement Project, which was tracking problems at the polls after Florida lawmakers cut early voting days.

The White House describes Victor as "a spirited and independent centenarian," who was born in Haiti in 1910 and arrived in the U.S. in 1989. She enjoys attending church services and cooking her own meals.

Victor voted at a library on the first day of early voting when waits were as long as six hours. She stood in line for three hours until some voting rights activists complained that an elderly woman was struggling on her feet. A poll worker asked Victor to return later. She did so, emerging that evening from the building with an "I Voted" sticker.

That prompted the crowd to erupt into applause — and encouraged many to wait their turn instead of giving up on voting, the White House said.

“The line was shorter at night,” she said. “I wanted to voted for my guy, my son President Obama.”

"She said even if she got dizzy or collapsed on the line, 'This is something I have to do,'" said Philippe Derose, a North Miami Beach councilman who met Victor after her challenges during early voting.

For South Florida, Victor symbolizes thousands who endured long lines during a reduced early voting schedule and on election day.

Local activists and observers expect Obama to address voter’s rights during the State of the Union address. During his election night speech Obama said “we have to fix that” in referring to those who waited hours to vote.

He echoed a similar sentiment in his inauguration speech. “Our journey is not complete until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote," he said.

Two Florida House members are also making a political statement with their guests at the State of the Union address. Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Weston and Lois Frankel of West Palm Beach both invited those impacted by gun violence.

Frankel’s guest, Lynn McDonnell, is the mother of Grace, 7, who died in December in the shooting spree that killed 26 people, mostly children, at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn. McDonnell’s husband, Chris, will attend the State of the Union with Rep. Gloria Negrete McLeod, D-Calif.

"The reality is that it's going to be pressure from the public that's going to move some of our colleagues, and that's the reason so many of us are bringing guests from Newtown," Frankel said. "I want my colleagues to look these parents in the eye, and tell them that we can get this done, that we can do something. You cannot look these parents in the eye and say 'I'm sorry, there's nothing we can do.' That's why these folks are going to be there."

Frankel sits on the Democratic Gun Violence Prevention Task Force, which recently outlined several gun-control measures. They include a ban on high capacity magazines; requiring criminal background checks for all firearms purchased at gun shows; banning assault weapons; requiring universal background checks and closing loopholes that allow gun purchasers to avoid a background check altogether; and strengthening mental health programs.

Grace's father gave Obama one of his daughter's paintings, which Obama keeps in his private study just off the Oval Office.

"Every time I look at that painting, I think about Grace, and I think about the life that she lived and the life that lay ahead of her," Obama said recently. "And most of all, I think about how when it comes to protecting the most vulnerable among us, we must act now...for all the Americans who are counting on us to keep them safe from harm."

Wasserman Schultz invited Megan Hobson, 17, of Hialeah, who in May was the victim of a drive-by shooting.

She was hit by a bullet that entered through the trunk of a car and helped save the life of a two-year-old passenger, according to the congresswoman's staff. Hobson spent three weeks under intensive care at Memorial Regional Hospital.

Hobson, now a senior at Miami-Dade's American Senior High, will join Wasserman Schultz at a news conference Tuesday morning before traveling to Washington for the president's speech.

Miami Herald staff writer Jacqueline Charles contributed to this report.

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