[Vinnie]

Good ol’ Miami.

This happened back in the 70s when I lived there. Off N. Kendall Dr., S. Miami
6 adults shot execution style. Mix of men and women.
Baby kidnapped. Perps left the baby on a street corner some time later.
Colombian drug related.

This kind of crap is one of the reasons I skedaddled from the place of my birth in the mid 80s.

[GOPJ]

During the change over some years back I heard folks in Miami were leaving their car doors unlocked so thieves wouldn’t have to break window to steal the radio...

[Prospero]

Sounds like we may have been "neighbors," since I lived near Kendell Drive in the early 70's. I remember two distinct times of "heightened tensions," following the desegregation of Miami-Dade schools and almost a decade later between the Mariel Boatlift and the peak in the Cocaine Boom, c. 1980, mitigated by Hurricane Andrew in 1992.

What an interesting place to live, with the fascinating history in a town now barely more than a century old.

Kendell was on the edge of South Miami, forty years ago, and now there's no interruption of population density and traffic past Homestead. A city as stable as a sandcastle on the geological timescale.

Since about 1970, there has been a kind of oscillating wave manifesting in periods characterized by ruthless violence, slowly increasing in frequency and nihilism.

A great place to live if one is reasonably well off and cautious, but unimaginably harsh, as harsh as the Everglades in August, on its good and evil poor people, and an above-average population of state-supported and impoverished mentally ill outpatients.

But, with high fences and a screened-in pool, and well-stocked ammo, etc. (you know, the "necessities" everywhere, these days) I'd probably risk living there still.