Police Interactions.

hanimmal said:

Kid just learned how to drive turning around in their neighborhood shot and killed by police.

No lights/sirens? I could easily see how when they finally finished backing up they saw guns pointed at them and freaked out and then were murdered for no reason.

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gonnagro said:

These officers will probably be found guilty of not following procedure at most. The fact they gave them several opportunities to stop and exit the vehicle will let them walk in the end as I believe fleeing vehicle justifies deadly use of force legally. My condolences to the families.

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gonnagro said:

These officers will probably be found guilty of not following procedure at most. The fact they gave them several opportunities to stop and exit the vehicle will let them walk in the end as I believe fleeing vehicle justifies deadly use of force legally. My condolences to the families.

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Dryxi said:

Police need a way to be charged for costing taxpayers money for their mistakes. Qualified immunity and taxpayers picking up the tab is not a very good way to discourage bad decisions. Make cops take out job insurance on themselves, open the door to citizens suing cops for misconduct and let insurance lawyers debate their actions. Messy at the beginning when lawsuits happen across the nation as people try to take advantage of the position the cops are placed in with insurance but it would even out overtime, with potentially less bad actors watching us.

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hanimmal said:

Their lights were not on, could you not imagine a situation where you were turning around, music on in the car talking with a friend after just learning how to drive, complete the turn (car still in drive) and all of a sudden you see gun pointed at you and you panic?

I got into a accident around the same time (backing up across double yellow lines on a slow road that just happened at the same time someone else was backing up as I was putting the car into drive and they backed into my car) and I hit the gas instead of brake.

What makes you think that they were fleeing the police? At what point would you be confident that they knew police were even there? Are you confident that if you had windows up/air going and radio on you would have heard that cop with no sirens/amplification of their voice while turning around like that?

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hanimmal said:

What makes you think that they were fleeing the police? At what point would you be confident that they knew police were even there? Are you confident that if you had windows up/air going and radio on you would have heard that cop with no sirens/amplification of their voice while turning around like that?

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gonnagro said:

I don't think they were fleeing, but the police will spin it that way and a jury, (if it even gets that far), will believe it. The system is so slanted toward them. At some point I'm sure the words "I feared for my life" will come up.

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injinji said:

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Florida police officers with guns drawn raided the home of an ousted health department data scientist Monday morning, searching for the former agency employee’s most powerful tools: her computer, her phone and other hardware that supports the coronavirus website she set up after accusing the state of manipulating its official numbers.

Law enforcement officials allege the scientist, Rebekah Jones, may have also used the devices to hack into a health department website in November and to send an unauthorized message to Florida emergency personnel, urging them to speak out against the state’s pandemic response. She has denied the accusation.

This is the latest clash between Jones and state officials, who have traded accusations since she was fired from the Florida Department of Health this summer. Jones said she had refused to comply with agency requests she considered unethical, and she has accused the state of mismanaging a health crisis that has so far infected more than a million residents and killed nearly 20,000.

After her dismissal, Jones launched her own data portal, advertising it as the transparent and independent alternative to the state dashboard. Now, Jones says, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s raid is an attempt to silence her work.

The armed officers, acting on a search warrant, knocked on the door of Jones’s house in Tallahassee around 8:30 a.m. Monday. A state police spokesperson said the officers announced their arrival, informed Jones they had a search warrant and tried calling her during the 20 minutes before she let them in.

Florida fired its coronavirus data scientist. Now she’s publishing the statistics on her own.

A 30-second video that Jones posted to Twitter captures the tense moments after she opened her door.

Jones has her hands up as one officer orders her to walk outside. She says her husband and kids are still inside. The officer then draws his handgun, walks to the base of a staircase and shouts, “Mr. Jones, come down the stairs — now.” Five seconds later, more officers enter, also brandishing their weapons, and one announces, “Police. Come down now.”

1/
There will be no update today.

At 8:30 am this morning, state police came into my house and took all my hardware and tech.

They were serving a warrant on my computer after DOH filed a complaint.

They pointed a gun in my face. They pointed guns at my kids.. pic.twitter.com/DE2QfOmtPU
— Rebekah Jones (@GeoRebekah) December 7, 2020

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From outside, Jones can be heard yelling, “Do not point that gun at my children” and “He just pointed a gun at my children.”

In tweets hours later, Jones said the officers also pointed their weapons at her and seized her “hardware and tech,” including her phone and computer. She said her devices contained “evidence of corruption at the state level.”

Jones is an outspoken critic of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), and she has alleged her ex-managers directed her to doctor virus case data to downplay risks of infection and death in the state. The health department has denied this.

“This is what happens to scientists who do their job honestly,” Jones wrote. “This is what happens to people who speak truth to power.”
According to an affidavit filed by state police special agent Noel Pratts, authorities traced last month’s breach of a health department Web platform to Jones, the agency’s former geographic information systems manager.

Florida Gov. DeSantis’s new data analyst: an anti-mask sports blogger with no credentials

Officials use the platform, ReadyOp, to coordinate emergency response across state agencies. On Nov. 10, members of a group specializing in public health emergencies received a message that read, according to the affidavit, “It’s time to speak up before another 17,000 people are dead. You know this is wrong. You don’t have to be a part of this. Be a hero. Speak out before it’s too late.”

At the time, officials told the Tampa Bay Times they didn’t know who was behind the missive or whether that person was a state employee. Spokesman Jason Mahon called the unsanctioned use “both irresponsible and unlawful.”

Jones did not respond to an interview request, and spokespeople for the health department and DeSantis directed questions about her allegations to the state police.

In a Monday evening interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo, Jones repeatedly denied sending the message, saying, “I’m not a hacker.” She warned current health department staffers who she has communicated with since her firing that “DeSantis will know soon enough that you’ve been talking to me, so be careful.” The raid, she said, was not a legitimate investigation but a “thinly veiled attempt by the governor to intimidate scientists.”

Jones’s attorney, Lawrence G. Walters, criticized the police officers’ “unnecessarily reckless and aggressive behavior in the execution of a search warrant for computers.”

“Our client was fully cooperative yet had guns pointed at her and her family,” Walters said, adding that he’s concerned the incident may also be in retaliation to a whistleblower complaint Jones filed against the health department in July.

On Twitter, Jones said she would not be cowed by what she characterized as a state-sanctioned intimidation campaign.

“If Desantis thought pointing a gun in my face was a good way to get me to shut up, he’s about to learn just how wrong he was,” she wrote. “I’ll have a new computer tomorrow. And then I’m going to get back to work.”

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TacoMac said:

Not blaming the officers on that one.

Why did she hang up on them and refuse to open the door for 30 minutes?

Normally, when that happens, whoever is holing up is preparing for a last stand.

The officers acted accordingly.

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TacoMac said:

She set it up to get a reaction. That's exactly how people get shot.

I'd cite her for obstruction and reckless endangerment.

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