Rebekah Jones, a Florida data scientist who said in May that she was fired for not changing COVID-19 data, posted a video on Twitter on Monday, December 7 that showed police entering her home with a search warrant. One officer can be seen on the video pointing his gun up the stairs while Jones says that her husband and children are home. Officials said they were investigating a report of “unauthorized access” to a Department of Health system.
A Video Shows Police Entering Her Home & Pointing a Gun up the Stairs
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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..
Late afternoon on December 7, Rebekah Jones shared a video on Twitter that showed police entering her home. You can watch the video above. An officer pulled out his gun after Jones stepped outside, and another officer followed and could be seen pointing his gun up the stairs.
The video begins with Jones’ opening the door and an officer telling her to go outside. When asked who else is in the home, Jones says: “My two children and my husband” as she walks outside, hands raised.
She’s asked to call them all downstairs. An officer can then be seen on the camera taking out his gun and walking to the bottom of the stairs saying, “Mr. Jones come down the stairs. Now.” He steps outside of the camera range after that moment.
Another officer joins and he can be seen on the video pointing his gun up the stairs while saying, “Police! Come down now.” The officer then lowers his gun.
In the background, Jones can be heard saying an officer pointed a gun at her children.
An officer is then heard loudly saying, “Search warrant.” The video cuts off at that point.
Jones Said They Had a Warrant for Her Computer
This is what happens to scientists who do their job honestly.
This is what happens to people who speak truth to power.
I tell them my husband and my two children are upstairs… and THEN one of them draws his gun.
On my children.
This is Desantis’ Florida.
Jones said in a tweet that the incident happened at 8:30 a.m. on Monday morning. She wrote: “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..”
In subsequent tweets, she said they took her phone and computer that she uses to post COVID-19 case numbers in Florida and school cases in the country. She wrote: “They claimed it was about a security breach. This was DeSantis. He sent the gestapo.”
She then wrote: “This is what happens to scientists who do their job honestly. This is what happens to people who speak truth to power. I tell them my husband and my two children are upstairs… and THEN one of them draws his gun. On my children. This is Desantis’ Florida.”
Jones later wrote that she was going to get a new computer and continue publishing COVID-19 data.
Officials Said They Were Investigating ‘Unauthorized Access to a Department of Health Messaging System’
Gretl Plessinger, spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, told Tallahassee Democrat that officials did take computer equipment from Jones’ home. Tallahassee Democrat referred to the raid as “brandishing firearms.”
Plessinger wrote about the raid:
FDLE began an investigation November 10, 2020 after receiving a complaint from the Department of Health regarding unauthorized access to a Department of Health messaging system which is part of an emergency alert system, to be used for emergencies only… As in all cases, our role is to determine the facts of what happened and a State Attorney determines whether or not charges are filed.
Jones Is Running a COVID-19 Data Site After She Was Fired in May
Rebekah Jones was the manager of the Florida Department of Healths’ Geographic Information System team and had helped create the dashboard of COVID-19 statistics for the state, NPR reported. In an email in May, Jones told subscribers that she and her office would not be managing the dashboard any longer, as she had been removed from that position.
Jones told CBS 12 that she was let go because she wouldn’t “manually change data to drum up support for the plan to reopen.” She said after she refused to censor data, she was removed. Jones had objected to removing records that listed symptoms or positive test results before they were officially announced, Tampa Bay Times reported after reviewing internal emails.
In an email to her supervisor the day after she wrote the COVID-19 subscribers list, Jones said that some of her comments had been misinterpreted, Tampa Bay Times reported. She also told the Sun-Sentinel that she was surprised by how controversial her email had been. She said when she sent the mass email, she was tired and had been working long hours.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis disputed the allegations from Jones in a press conference in May. DeSantis said, in part: “She is not the chief architect of our web portal, that is another false statement… She was putting data on the portal which the scientists didn’t believe was valid data. So she didn’t listen to the people who were her superiors…and so she was dismissed because of that and because of a bunch of different reasons…”
Helen Aguirre Ferre, Communications Director for DeSantis, told the Miami Herald: “Rebekah Jones exhibited a repeated course of insubordination during her time with the department, including her unilateral decisions to modify the department’s COVID-19 dashboard.”
Jones ultimately created her own Florida COVID Action website, which you can see here. She tweeted about the website after sharing the video of police raiding her home.
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.
I’ll have a new computer tomorrow.
And then I’m going to get back to work.
If you want to help, my website is still at t.co/JbQtrVbRuv
She launched the website in June, CNN reported, funded by donations. She presented her data next to the DOH’s data for comparison, CNN reported.
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