Agreed--as a Florida resident, I have heard a variety of highly-charged opinions on this story from many of my fellow residents, but very few hard facts to confirm or deny any particular narrative.

I think the raid on Ms. Jones home was a grotesque and unwarranted use of police force, but I also think her "whistle-blowing" story is highly questionable based on the facts available.

I don't know what the raid on Ms. Jones house was about and am going to reserve judgment until I do. There's just so much weirdness. She calls herself a data scientist, which she may well consider herself to be, but the state appears to have hired her as a website developer, and fired her as a website developer, because she refused to put out data in her capacity as a web developer that the state's paid, official data scientists were giving her.

I guess you could consider her a whistleblower. But it's unclear the state did anything wrong other than a) insist that the numbers from its data scientists be published on a state website instead of Ms. Jones's and b) protect its emergency communication system by investigating abuses of same by what to me, at least, looks like a very likely suspect.

According to the article in the Tampa Bay Times, Jones' official title was:

Geographic information system manager for the Florida Department of Health's Division of Disease Control and Health Protection

Interesting.

If you have few hard facts, how are you evaluating the justification for raiding her home?

It’s fairly easy to reconcile the opinions “I’m not sure if she has done something criminal” and “the police used excessive and intentionally intimidating force when other safer options were open to them”.

The raid on her home is one event which is pretty well documented, and I have little tolerance for militarized police tactics in general.

I'd suggest you have a look at how policing is done outside of USA. A raid on someone's home is almost never justified - it would take highly exceptional circumstances to make a "normal" police force perform like that.

Raids are common in almost every European country - which in general have "normal" police forces - where the police believe someone might destroy evidence.

Only if the charges are heavy enough, and even then it usually happens in civilized way, not like SWAT.

It happens in Ireland all the time for personal amounts of drugs. They are generally unarmed raids unless it's a gangland case, though.

>>It happens in Ireland

hmm

>>They are generally unarmed raids

So then does not happen all the time in Ireland

You should really look into how the US conducts "raids" even when there is no "gangland" case involved.

They have one procedure for all raids, and it very militaristic, they are always armed, and it is ALWAYS excessive and violent.

What you are calling a "raid" in Ireland would not be what we in the US called a Raid which is very specific activity of police

Different threat models, but a raid is a raid.

Just like an arrest is an arrest, even though in the US it will necessarily involve firearms and in Ireland, it almost never will.

> a raid is a raid

Nonsense. There's a world of difference between a couple of cops knocking on your door and a full squad of fully armed, fully armoured militarised faux-soldiers busting down your door and threatening to shoot you, your family and your pets - and often following through on those threats.

You are moving the goal posts.

Police knocking on your door is not a raid - the element of surprise is the defining factor, from the US to anywhere in Europe to an infantry section in Kandahar.

You claim above that raids are unique to the US and its abnormal police, but now the claim has morphed into the manner in which they are conducted that's different.

Even in Ireland, where police are routinely unarmed and gun crime is rare, if there's a reasonable suspicion that a suspect may have firearms, a police raid will involve nearly identical weapons and equipment to a US SWAT team.

I think you have an unrealistic view of policing outside of the US. There are no police forces that do not conduct raids.

The militarisation of police is separate problem, and the solution is not going to involve removing the tactics that the so-called normal police forces rely on.

> I think you have an unrealistic view of policing outside of the US.

I live outside the US, dipshit.

In some countries, a surprise raid of your home means “we think you have hostages in your basement” or something at that level.

You're going to see surprise raids in any country whenever the police believe there's evidence to be found that would be destroyed or tampered with if the suspect had advance notice.

That doesn't explain them training guns on her when she was clearly unarmed and not a threat.

Also didn't they wait something like 20 minutes before breaching the residence?

It is a weird story. I do not think she is being targeted for speaking her mind or advocating a particular view of the COVID, the charges almost certainly are for accessing the non-public data she should not have accessed.

And some data is sensitive. For example, if someone was pulling private medical records and harassing or blackmailing another person with that information it would, to me, justify both the search and the potential arrest. It should not be the statistics about COVID -- that data is usually available to the public after some aggregation.

That said, the state response and the arrest warrant look very strange in this case; so strange that it smells of a personal vendetta (e.g., find a potential HIPAA violation and throw a book at her). I hope the state will clearly identify what the heck she is accused of accessing and why it is so damaging that the state resorted to its recent actions. My 2c.

> For example, if someone was pulling private medical records and harassing or blackmailing another person

I think it's highly unlikely that a state data analyst would have access to any private medical records. The Covid stats would have probably already been aggregated by the hospitals before they were sent to the state.

> find a potential HIPAA violation and throw a book at her

HIPAA is a federal law, so a violation of it wouldn't be prosecuted by the state of Florida.

Your chosen terminology is a little strange to me(weird); would you by chance be an American?

This is a textbook example of the Government(State of Florida) targeting an individual for their speech.

But then again, Do-Nothing DeSantis is the successor to Senator Red Tide Rick. Par for the course with Florida, sadly.

+1. Also for that raid alone where public saw SWAT team members putting machine guns in her children faces, she most likely will settle and get $10MM+ settlement in less than 10 years. Of course our taxpayers money. DegenerateSantis will be then on his next high paid gig. Watch and see.

>Also for that raid alone where public saw SWAT team members putting machine guns in her children faces

Uhh what? The only video I've seen has an officer walking around with a handgun drawn and pointing it as he moves around her house, and at one point he aims it upstairs where her kids are.

How does this get telephone-gamed into "SWAT team members putting machine guns in her children faces"?? Is there some other video I haven't seen?