Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Footage shows raid of whistleblower’s house
Body camera video lines up with video from Rebekah Jones
Authorities released body camera footage that shows Florida police raiding the home of former Department of Health data scientist Rebekah Jones, who accused state officials of wrongfully firing her for refusing to manipulate COVID-19 statistics.
The footage, shot outside the home, seems to line up with a video Jones took of the raid from inside that she shared on Twitter.
In the body camera video, agents are shown trying to contact Jones for about 20 minutes. An officer holding a gun talks with her through the window and tells her to open the door. Jones comes out with her hands up and tells officers her husband and two children are inside.
The officer wearing the body camera stays outside facing Jones, so the footage does not show the inside of the house as officers go inside. Jones looks in after them and then yells “Do not point that gun at my children! He just pointed a gun at my children!”
An officer pulls Jones over to the side of the door frame and tells her to “just stay right there. Relax.”
Jones looks at the officer next to her and asks “Why is he pointing a gun up the stairs? There are children up there.”
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement served the search warrant at Jones’ home in Tallahassee on Monday morning in connection with an investigation into who hacked the state’s internal notification system with a message urging state employees to come forward with information about Florida’s handling of the pandemic.
The alert read: “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.”
Jones, a vocal critic of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ handling of the pandemic, tweeted a video of agents entering her home Monday morning with guns drawn. The video does not show any children, or agents pointing guns at any children.
It does show an officer in the hallway with a gun pointed up toward the ceiling and the stairwell. That’s when Jones yelled from the front door.
FDLE said agents didn’t point guns at anyone. But they did
know Jones’ husband went upstairs. According to a prepared statement released with the body camera footage, “agents went to the back of the house and saw Ms. Jones’ husband going upstairs.” That was about five minutes after agents first knocked on the door, according to FDLE’s description of the raid.
In the statement, FDLE Commissioner Richard Swearingen said the agents in the video exercised patience in the raid, what he called “one of the most dangerous events a law enforcement officer will engage in.” FDLE previously said officers acted in line with routine procedures for search warrants.
Swearingen said in the statement it was Jones’ “actions” that could have put her or her family in danger. It’s unclear which actions he’s referring to, but the statement seems to suggest it’s her initial refusal to answer the door.
“Agents afforded Ms. Jones ample time to come to the door and resolve this matter in a civil and professional manner. As this video will demonstrate, any risk or danger to Ms. Jones or her family was the result of her actions.”
As the body camera video continues, officers again ask her husband to come down the stairs and Jones calls inside to her family, telling them to come down the stairs carefully. The officer holding her pulls her aside again and states her name to get her attention. She replies
“He pointed a gun up the stairs at my children” as officers shuffle her off to the side of the door.
An agent then tells her, “That was not smart what you’re doing, OK? You need to calm down and get your head on right now because you’re making all the wrong decisions.”
Jones’ husband comes outside carrying their toddler, and her young son walks out behind him wearing a Star Wars shirt.
The agent lectures Jones briefly about how they spoke on the phone and that she knew who they were.
“I’m gonna explain everything to you about why we’re here, but right now we’re off to a pretty rocky start. All you had to do was answer the door. There was no doubt about who we were,” the
agent says.
Jones replies that their lawyer told them not to answer the door “the last time that you guys came.” She asks what officers are looking for and if they’re looking for a person, and the agent says he won’t intentionally leave her in the dark.
“You’re not gonna have any doubts or questions after we talk. It would have been infinitely preferable if you guys had just come and answered the door without the kids having to be a part of this.”
Jones could not be reached for comment Thursday night, but she did write about the release of the body camera footage on Twitter.
“Bodycam footage released by police shows they waited about 13 minutes
outside while I got dressed, and were ready to break my door down with a sledgehammer. At 13:43, an officer is shown pointing a gun at my face. They thought this would ... help them?”
Earlier in the video when officers first knocked and tried to get in touch with her, they discussed smashing a glass pane on the door.
Jones goes on: “It also shows me coming out with my arms up, cooperating, with my husband coming down the stairs with my two year old in his arms. My video from inside showed them pointing the guns right at them. This is ‘restraint?’ Really???”
FDLE is “comfortable with the release of this video because it will not interfere with the cybercrime investigation” because it was shot
from outside the house, the agency’s statement says.
The state’s probe involves the unauthorized message sent on Nov. 10. The Department of Health filed a complaint with FDLE regarding unauthorized access to a DOH messaging alert system used for emergencies, and agents suspect someone at Jones’ home “illegally accessed the system,” according to FDLE. The agents seized her phone and her computer in the raid.
Jones has denied sending the messages, and she hasn’t been charged with a crime. It’s not clear if she will be. The state attorney of Leon County did not respond to a request for comment.
Jones was formerly the head of the Florida Department of Health’s Geographic Information Services division, which maps and tracks data. During March and April, she was the driving force behind the state’s coronavirus dashboard, a daily trove of data about the virus’ progression through the state.
Jones was dismissed from her position at the Florida Department of Health in early May. She said she was fired because she refused a request from a superior to alter coronavirus data.
Internal emails indicate Jones resisted when her bosses told her to remove the raw data from the website, meaning that users could no longer download it for analysis.
In July, Jones filed a whistleblower complaint against the Florida Department of Health, saying that she was removed from her post for refusing to falsify data.
Rick Johnson, the Tallahassee lawyer representing the ousted data scientist, called the complaint straightforward. “They told her to fudge the numbers and she said ‘no,’ so they fired her and fudged the numbers without her,” he says.
There has been no evidence of falsification when it comes to the state’s coronavirus figures, though state officials do regularly cite what experts say may be a misleading statistic.
Fred Piccolo, the governor’s spokesman, said that DeSantis had no involvement in the raid and learned about it from the news.