Tannie "T-Man" Burke, 21, tells CBS4 that he's used to being hassled by cops even though he's never been convicted of a crime. He's been arrested twice and detained several other times, he believes, simply because he's a young black man.

"I feel they stop me because they see a black man walking down the street," he tells Jim Defede. "I don't know what to say about it. I just feel bad about it. That's it."

But his arrest on August 27 seemed particularly cruel and strange. Burke is blind, and after police arrested him on suspicion of marijuana possession they put him in the back of a cop car. They never took him in to be booked, he says, and then dropped him at night in a desolate area nearly a mile from his home and didn't offer help getting home.

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Photo by Elvert Barnes | Flickr CC 2.0

Are South Beach pooches in danger?

Last Sunday morning Les Lehotay, a Miami Beach hairdresser, had breakfast at Las Olas Cafe, at Sixth Street and Euclid Avenue, with his friend Lorenzo Ramos, a realtor, and Ramos' dog Rocco, a healthy two and a half-year-old French bulldog.

At one point Ramos took Rocco for a walk around the neighborhood, and somewhere on 5th Street Rocco meandered into some bushes and promptly ate something. Ramos pulled him back, but just a few minutes later, by the time Ramos and Rocco got back to Las Olas, Rocco's body was beset by violent seizures, and he appeared to have trouble breathing.

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Senator Bill Nelson is just about the only problem the Florida Democratic Party doesn't have. The 72-year-old senator is in his third term and always cruises to an easy reelection, and has held one elected office or another since 1973 save for a four-year gap in the early '90s. But is he really the man to trust when it comes to plotting the future of the state party? We'll find out.

Nelson has been named the co-chair of the newly announced Democrats' Leadership Expansion to Advance Democrats (LEAD) task force along with former Orlando Police Chief and failed congressional candidate Val Demings.

See also: Florida's Democratic Party Is a Joke, but Who Is the Punchline: Its Leaders or Voters?

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Photo by Mr. Usaji via Wikimedia Commons

SoHo Beach House: $460,000. Prime Italian restaurant: $280,000. Blockbuster video: $25,000.

It reads like a bill for a raging Art Basel party. In fact, it's just a few of the fees that local businesses owe the City of Miami Beach.

Because of billing mistakes and lax enforcement, however, officials now say the are going to forgive the more than $13 million, essentially giving developers and business owners a huge holiday bonus. So to save some sense of accountability, New Times is publishing the full list of outstanding fines.

See also: Miami Beach Fire Department Is Aflame With Corruption and Abuse

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It was a historic day for equal rights in Miami-Dade yesterday, as the county commission moved one step closer to adding transgendered residents to anti-discrimination laws. But it's the city across Biscayne Bay from County Hall that took home the area's highest honors for LGBT equality in the latest national survey from the Human Rights Campaign.

Miami Beach earned a perfect score from the advocacy group. Other South Florida towns -- especially Hialeah -- didn't fare quite so well.

See also: Preservationists Cry Foul as County Commission Considers Allowing Cities More Autonomy

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Photo via Keep Bay Harbor Islands Beautiful's Facebook page

If Bay Harbor Islands, the two-island, 5,000-person town on Biscayne Bay between North Miami and Bal Harbour, is known for anything, it's MiMo architecture. But at a commission meeting earlier this week, the town moved closer to breaking away from the county's historic building preservation rules, and some town residents -- already devastated by a recent development boom -- are more worried than ever about the future of the town's distinctive character.

"We're really kind of desperate here," said Teri D'Amico, a resident leading the preservation movement.

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Last month, the City of South Miami passed a resolution calling for the area from Orlando and Tampa Bay to the Florida Keys to secede from the rest of the state to form America's 51st state: the state of South Florida. We, of course, love the idea (even if we had previously floated the idea of just Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, and the Keys breaking off).

However, there are a lot of details to consider when forming a new state -- like, well, state symbols. Clearly they are the most important part of all of this.

See also: South Miami Wants to Split Florida Into Two States, and the Entire Miami Media Missed It

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via NEP

An example of a production truck rented out by NEP

DirecTV's pre-game show for tomorrow Dolphins vs, Bills game is in question thanks to some local thieves.

A producer for the network's Rich Eisen Show went out to the parking lot at the Marriot Hotel in Miami Lakes to check on the production truck they had booked to help produce tomorrow's show only to realize it was missing.

Eisen himself tweeted about the theft.

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For the past few presidential elections, Florida has been the grand prize of swing states. It's 29 electoral votes could have conceivably gone either way.

President Obama was able to win Florida in the past two elections, but that was only after hard campaigning and a sophisticated "get out the vote" system in the state. If demographic trends hold steady, though, Florida could soon become an easier win for Democrats.

That, however, is a big if.

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Photos by Claire Nelson

The Miami Marine Stadium is coming back. It's really coming back. After sitting dormant and abandoned for over 20 years, the Miami International Boat Show is expected to announce that they'll move their 2016 and 2017 editions from Miami Beach to the Virginia Key aquatic stadium.

Though renovations haven not begun, Friends of the Marine Stadium hope to have all their ducks in a line and renovations completed in time for the 2016 fair.

See also: Gloria Estefan, Street Artists Make Their Mark on Miami Marine Stadium

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Welcome to Hurricanes-Seminoles Week 2014, the latest installment in one of college football's most recognizable rivalries. When it's UM-FSU, shit goes down -- it's science.

Canes-Noles is a game that garners attention around the nation regardless of the stakes, and rightfully so -- the matchup has produced multiple memorable moments over the past few decades, many of which have had national championship implications. The faces on the sidelines may change, but Hurricanes-Seminoles continues to produce classic college football highlights. Here are ten of the most memorable.

See also: Five Reasons UM-FSU Is College Football's Greatest Rivalry

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Courtesy of Bâoli

It's getting late at the South Beach restaurant Bâoli when ripped, shirtless waiters start pouring liquor directly into women's mouths. Bass lines thunder from the DJ booth built right in the middle of the Collins Avenue dining room. Soon dancers in sequined thongs leap onto the bar and gyrate to the beat.

Then comes the coup de grace: As crowds cheer and writhe amid candlelit tables, bartenders pour flammable liquid into the spill guards running along the bar, whip out lighters, and set the whole thing ablaze.

It's just another Wednesday night inside one of the most quintessentially South Beach restaurants, a place where Pelé and Britto recently popped Dom Pérignon together, Jamie Foxx brought his crew to drop a few Gs on bottle service, and the kitchen made headlines by offering the most expensive burger in Miami.

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Courtesy of Allie Conti

A dramatic traffic accident created a bizarre scene last night in Little Haiti.

Around 1:30 a.m., a red sedan lost control on North Miami Avenue near 79th Street, flipping upside down and landing on its roof. Afterward, the car's occupants appeared unhurt and could be seen making phone calls. Passersby in both directions had to veer around the disabled vehicle, which was strewn perpendicular to traffic.

It's unclear if another car was involved in the crash. More details to come.

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Rick Scott and his fellow Tallahassee Republicans' strong opposition to the Affordable Care Act has resulted in the state refusing to allow the federal government to expand Medicaid in Florida.

But their refusal could cause Florida hospitals to miss out on billions in funding, with Miami's cash-strapped Jackson Memorial Hospital in particular losing an estimated $570 million a year.

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Last week we urged you to go vote, even if you didn't want to vote for Rick Scott or Charlie Crist:

At Least Vote for Third-Party or Write-in Candidates. It's not throwing your vote out. The only way to throw your vote out is not to vote. If 60,000 voters between the ages of 18 and 29 wrote in Mickey Mouse to be Florida's next governor in today's election, politicians in 2016 and 2018 would sit around thinking, Well, hmm, how do we get that Mickey Mouse vote for ourselves?

Slight correction: It turns out Florida election officials don't bother to count votes for Mickey Mouse or other unregistered write-in candidates anymore.

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Marcus Faella (left) plotted a race war from a compound only 11 miles from Disney World.

On a rural compound just 11 miles from Disney World, Marcus Faella and his followers spent years stockpiling weapons and food, erecting barbed wire, and conducting elaborate paramilitary drills. Their goal, according to federal agents: igniting a "race war" in Central Florida.

Two years ago, the feds busted the Aryan compound before they could carry out any of their plans. Yesterday, Faella was sentenced for his role as the group's leader.

So what does plotting a race war carry in Florida these days? Just six months in jail, apparently.

See also: Marcus Faella and His Florida White Supremacist Group Arrested For Plotting a Race War

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Photo by Bobak via Wikimedia Commons

Florida International University is a juggernaut. The school is fast approaching 60,000 students, has two major campuses plus half a dozen satellite locations, and received voter approval last week to expand into 64 acres of Tamiami Park.

But not all members of the FIU family are happy. In fact, some are downright pissed. Daniel Weihnacht, a 52-year-old graduate student, has fought FIU for more than two years over what he says are hidden -- and perhaps illegal -- tuition fees propping up the ever-expanding institution.

"FIU is overcharging some grad students by tens of thousands of dollars," Weihnacht says. "It is student loan fraud."

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