A Florida data scientist who accused the state of manipulating coronavirus data announced that she would surrender on Sunday night after authorities issued an arrest warrant.
Rebekah Jones, one of the data scientists who helped make Florida’s COVID-19 panel, said on Twitter that she would surrender to authorities about a month after the police broke into her home.
“To protect my family from ongoing police violence and to show that I am ready to fight whatever they play against me, I am becoming a police officer in Florida on Sunday night,” tweeted Jones. “The governor will not win his war against science and freedom of expression. He will not silence those who speak ”.
To protect my family from ongoing police violence and to show that I am ready to fight whatever they play against me, I am becoming a police officer in Florida on Sunday night. The governor will not win his war against science and freedom of expression. He will not silence those who speak.
– Rebekah Jones (@GeoRebekah) January 16, 2021
Jones claimed that she was removed from office in May because she refused to “manually change the data” to support the argument to lift restrictions on coronavirus, but a spokeswoman for the Gov. Ron DeSantis
Ron DeSantisFlorida Republicans close ranks with Trump after the siege of Capitol Hill Once he was nominated for defeat, Trump’s aspirations for 2024 are already toasting after the chaos of Capitol Hill. State and federal officials struggle to launch vaccines, delays MORE (R) accused Jones in May of “exhibiting a repeated course of insubordination” and “blatant disrespect”.
Police claim that she used a Department of Health communication platform to send a text message on November 10 telling others that it was “time to speak before 17,000 others die”. Police acted on the basis of a search warrant on December 7 to investigate the text, which Jones denied sending.
On twitterJones claimed that an arrest warrant was issued on a charge unrelated to the operation, saying there was no evidence that she sent the group’s text.
“They found no evidence of anything related to the warrant, so they invented something new to come after me in retaliation,” she said.
“However, the police found documents that I received / downloaded from sources in the state, or something like that … it is not clear at this point what exactly they are saying that I had and shouldn’t have, but an agent confirmed that they don’t have nothing to do with the issue of the warrant, ”said Jones. “The attack was based on a lie.”
The data scientist also said that an agent told her lawyer that the authorities could add more charges if she spoke against the police.
The governor’s office and the Florida Police Department (FDLE) did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The FDLE confirmed for NBC News on Sunday that the agents were cooperating with Jones’ lawyers and would release more information after she was in custody.
Jones has filed a lawsuit against the state for the attack, calling this an illegal act of retaliation and an attempt to silence it, and has requested the return of the state computer equipment seized by the authorities during the operation.
The data scientist accused the state of misrepresenting the data, including only reporting the rate of new positive COVID-19 tests. After she left the Florida Department of Health, the state stopped releasing the list of coronavirus deaths from medical examiners, which sometimes reached 10% more than the state’s count, according to NBC News.