The sound of humanity scraping bottom

Roman Thomas and Shanteria Sanders
Photos: Miami-Dade Corrections
(Click here to enlarge.)

I've covered some horrific stories in my 30 plus years as a photojournalist in Miami, but I don't believe I've ever covered one as depraved and sickening - even by Miami standards - as this story uncovered by the Miami Herald's David Ovalle.

Miami pimp forced teen to tattoo his name on her eyelids

By DAVID OVALLE
dovalle@MiamiHerald.com

When a 13-year-old runaway threatened to leave a Miami pimp, police say, he forced her to a Liberty City flea market tattoo shop to ink his street name, “Suave,” on her eyelids.

The vicious twist to a human trafficking case surfaced this month when Miami police arrested Roman Thomas III, 26, who already on probation after serving four years in state prison for having sex with a minor.

Thomas was wearing a state corrections GPS monitor when Miami police arrested him on March 18

The girl, dubbed “Sparkle,” was pimped through the classified advertising website Backpage.com, police say. Thomas and a woman plied the girl with liquor, marijuana and the drug Molly as she had sex with men at the Miami Shores Motel.
[...]
Thomas will be formally charged in the new case on April 13. Another woman, Shanteria Sanders, 23, who also has “Suave” tattooed across her chest, also was charged in the case. Both Thomas and Sanders face charges of human trafficking, false imprisonment, lewd and lascivious exhibition and delivery of a controlled substance to a child.

Thomas, 26, has a long criminal history. In 2008, he was charged with attempted murder and other felonies. He wound up pleading guilty to the felony battery and four counts of lewd and lascivious battery on a child between the ages of 12 and 16.

After his four-year prison sentence was done, Thomas was released in September, and placed on five years probation with the ankle monitor.

Click here to read Ovalle's entire story.

The Washington Post's Joel Achenbach writes (another) obituary for newspapers

Miami News, Dec. 31, 1988.

The Washington Post's Joel Achenbach posted some thoughts today on his blog about that "17-year-old kid who sold a $30 million [news] app, called Summly, to Yahoo."

"The app," Achenbach writes, "boils down news stories to 400-character summaries."

Achenbach began his post by talking about why he prefers print over "news apps."

I like the bandwidth of print, and the way a broadsheet paper can organize the world into manageable sections. When I scan the front page I download, instantly, and not entirely consciously, the collective judgment of the editors at the A1 meeting, and although some fundamentalists may object to the notion of filtered information I consider the filtering to be an added value. I don’t want raw data. I don’t want transcripts. I want information that’s already made it through some winnowing processes. I want a veteran reporter’s judgment to shape the story I read about the Supreme Court’s oral arguments on gay marriage, for example. Later, in theory, I could go online to C-Span and hear the event unedited — if I had time. Another thing I like about a newspaper is how easy it is to dig quickly and deeply into the weather report or the sports scores, without having to wait for the page to “load.” Print just feels faster to me.

Achenbach - a former Miami Herald staffer - ended his post with this: "It’s important to remember that revolutionary changes in the news business have been going on for a long time. Yesterday I looked at a story I did in January 1989 for Tropic magazine (Miami Herald) about the closing of the Miami News. That was before the Internet. The closing of a paper is a terrible thing. Who keeps the archives, I wonder, of the News, Miami’s oldest paper? Did any of those old articles ever migrate to the Internet in some fashion?"

I like newspapers when they tell me things I don't know. But when I can tell a newspaper reporter something he - or she - doesn't know, then that's good, too. We both win.

So when Achenbach asked, "Who keeps the archives, I wonder, of the News, Miami’s oldest paper?" And, "Did any of those old articles ever migrate to the Internet in some fashion?", I was more than happy to point out in the comments section of his post that the Miami News archives do indeed, still exist on the Internet.

Achenbach wrapped things up by posting six paragraphs from his 1989 Tropic piece. Achenbach writes that "It was quite an ordeal to get it in [Tropic], as the executives upstairs at Knight Ridder were not happy with our decision to write about their closing of the News. But of course that was 24 years ago. So, you know, who cares?"

I remember reading his piece when it was published. I was curious to see how it would read almost a quarter-century later, so I looked it up.

Here's a bit more of Achenbach's 1989 Tropic story:

The final day should have been a time to stand back and recount the lore of Miami's oldest newspaper, the sediment of 92 years of journalism and five Pulitzer Prizes. It was an institution that covered, created and preserved the local history, having predated by two months the official founding of Miami. This was the paper that in the '30s tried to run Al Capone out of town, that in the '40s helped shut down the S&G crime syndicate, that in the '50s pushed early for civil rights and exposed migrant labor horrors, that in the '60s broke the story of the Cuban Missile Crisis and criticized the Vietnam War at a time when few others dared speak so harshly. It was once known as the best second paper in the country, a writer's paper that threw the Five W's out the window and tried to be fun and smart. It was one of the few liberal papers in the South, with nothing to be ashamed of except perhaps a brief stretch in the '70s when the screaming street edition ran headlines like How I Met My Animal Lover and Starving Mothers Eat Babies and Pope: I Am Not Gay.

A few times in recent weeks Kleinberg and Keasler and Don Wright, the editorial cartoonist who started as a copy boy in the early 1950s, paused to pitch a little lore. Keasler arrived at The News 30 years ago on a Monday. That Wednesday, there was a rumor that the paper would fold. "Sure enough, 30 years later, it did," Keasler says.

Back then there was a poker game every day in the photography lab, lasting hours into the night. You could also gamble at darts, or play chess. No one wore a tie and the copy editors had green eyeshades. When The News staffers moved to the Herald building in 1966 they thought it hysterical that The Herald employed security guards. How pompous. There were always pranks: One time the sports editor came back from vacation and found his office filled with an inflated 12-foot weather balloon; Kleinberg had a portable outhouse delivered and placed on the publisher's manicured lawn; on Kleinberg's 25th anniversary the staff put out the edition a little early and fled, so that when Kleinberg came back from lunch the newsroom was utterly vacant. He said he thought he had died and gone to hell.

-Joel Achenbach on the death of the Miami News - Tropic Magazine, Jan. 29, 1989.

Your lunch hour time waster

Cute dog photobombs its owner's Craigslist ad.

Click images to enlarge.

Finally, an honest headline from the Miami Herald

To say they have major staffing problems at the Miami Herald is like saying Miami gets warm in the summer.

In the past 6 months or so, at least 4 experienced reporters have quit.

In addition to those, Investigations Editor Michael Sallah left to join the Washington Post. A veteran reporter and a veteran photographer retired after 42 years and 40 years of service respectively.

Just last week, business writer Elaine Walker announced she was leaving the paper to go to work for a law firm. A handful of other staffers have hinted at retirement plans.

And, according to Frank Alvarado at Miami New Times, "Scott Hiaasen, genius reporter and son of famed columnist Carl Hiaasen, is off to clerk for a judge. 'I haven't gotten a raise in ten years,' he says."

The common thread that connects all the recent departures is that none of the people who've left have been replaced. None. Zero.

Instead, Herald honchos have resorted to playing newsroom musical chairs and whack-a-mole to fill key assignments.

When education reporter Laura Isensee left last year to join a public radio station in Texas, David Smiley who had been covering Miami Beach, was moved to the education beat.

Several years ago, David Ovalle, who had been covering the police beat, was reassigned to cover courts. That left the newspaper that won its first Pulitzer in 1951 for crime coverage, without a full-time reporter covering the crime and cops beat.

To fill that gap, the Herald now copies and pastes crime stories from TV station websites...or, on some days, it just ignores crime stories altogether.

But, there is one bright spot.

If you're among the four or five people in Miami who believe it's never too soon for another page one story from the island nation of Haiti, there's reason to rejoice.

While the Herald skimps on crime coverage at a time when many of Miami's poor and not-so-poor neighborhoods have turned into outdoor shooting galleries; the paper always manages to find the resources to cover Haiti.

But, at least now they're being honest with readers about where their priorities lie. Take a look at this morning's front page.

Click here to enlarge.

Miami-Dade Police looking for a serial thief who targets unsuspecting women at Falls Shopping Center

From the Random Pixels Crime Desk...

Miami-Dade Police are looking for a particularly brazen female serial thief who has stolen purses from unsuspecting women at several restaurants at the Falls Shopping Center. They believe the woman is responsible for thefts dating as far back as Aug. 2011.

Now, there's a clear video of the subject and cops are hoping someone recognizes her and gives them a call.

DATES & TIMES OF OCCURRENCES:

Friday, August 19, 2011, at 7:30 p.m.

Friday, September 30, 2011, at 9:05 p.m.

Friday, January 13, 2012, at 8:15 p.m.

Monday, March, 12, 2012, at 8:20 p.m.

Monday, April 23, 2012, at 4:30 p.m.

Friday, December 14, 2012, at 8:15 p.m.

ADDRESS OF OCCURRENCE: Several restaurants (P.F. Chang's, Outback Steakhouse and B.J.'s Restaurant & Brewhouse) located in/near the Falls Shopping Center located at 8888 S.W 136th Street.

VICTIM(S): Not Available

NAME:

D.O.B.:

SUBJECT(S): Unknown female

NAME: Unknown

D.O.B.:

NARRATIVE:

The Miami-Dade Police Department (MDPD) is investigating a subject that is responsible for the theft of at least 6 purses between August 19, 2011, and December 14, 2012. In each case, the modus operandi remains consistent.

The subject enters a restaurant and targets an unsuspecting female victim who has placed her purse on the back of her chair or underneath the bar. Once the victim is distracted, the subject steals the victim’s purse and quickly exits the restaurant. The subject has stolen thousands of dollars from the victims and is known to use their credit cards for purchases in the area.

MDPD has obtained surveillance video that captures the image of the subject. Investigators are seeking the assistance of the community in identifying and/or locating this individual.

Anyone with information regarding this incident is urged to contact CrimeStoppers

(305) 471-TIPS (8477) or (866) 471-8477

Visit crimestoppersmiami.com and select “Give a Tip”

Send a text message to 274637. Enter CSMD followed by the tip information and press send.

Your mid-afternoon time waster

CAUTION: Images in the following video may be disturbing to some viewers. You've been warned.

LeBron James Photobombs Ray Allen During Interview.