Tag: florida

NAACP Leader Defends Living in Florida Despite Org’s Travel Warning: ‘We Haven’t Told Anybody To Leave’

The NAACP chairman denied being a hypocrite despite his organization’s travel advisory warning blacks to avoid his home state of Florida.

Leon Russell was called a hpyocrite by Florida GOP Chair Christian Ziegler who noted the NAACP chairman lived in Tampa. Ziegler offered, in a Twitter post, to pay for Russell’s move to another state if he really hated living in Florida.

Fox News further reported:

NAACP board of directors chairman Leon W. Russell pushed back against criticism for his organization’s travel advisory for Black people in the state of Florida while he himself lives in the Tampa Bay area.

Appearing on MSNBC’s “The ReidOut,” Russell discussed the recent backlash over the NAACP warning Black people against traveling to Florida following “Governor Ron DeSantis’ aggressive attempts to erase Black history.”

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Florida cop charged with using dead man’s credit card information to buy fast food, gas, and hotel stay

A police officer in Florida was arrested with her handcuffs and charged with stealing a dead man’s credit card information to purchase fast food, according to the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office.

St. Cloud Police Officer Dianne Ferreira, 25, stands accused of theft of credit card information with intent to use, fraudulent use of a credit card over $200, and use of the personal ID of a deceased person. Her arrest was announced Tuesday during a joint press conference held by the OCSO and the SCPD.

“She was an officer, but she doesn’t deserve that title now,” St. Cloud Police Chief Doug Goerke said on Wednesday.

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The deputy and the disappeared

One morning 19 years ago, Marcia Williams woke up praying for her son. Terrance worked two jobs, and liked reading Socrates, and had a scar on his right hand, near the thumb, from one time when he played with matches as a little boy. He was Marcia’s only child. She prayed and prayed, fighting against this inexplicable feeling that something terrible was about to happen.

A few hours later, Terrance crossed paths with a deputy sheriff. He got in the deputy’s patrol car. Then he disappeared.

The deputy said he’d given Terrance a ride to a Circle K convenience store. But there was no proof that Terrance arrived at the Circle K. And his mother never saw him again.

Eventually, Marcia learned something astonishing about this deputy sheriff.

Three months earlier, another man had also taken a ride in his patrol car.

Just like Terrance Williams, Felipe Santos had been driving illegally.

Just like Williams, he encountered Cpl. Steven Calkins of the Collier County Sheriff’s Office.

And just like Williams, he disappeared right after that.

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Florida LGBTQ group cancels Pride parade when told it must be adults only

Officials in a southeastern Florida town have shut down a gay pride parade and restricted other pride events, disallowing anyone under the age of 21 from attending. This comes after Florida Governor Ron Desantis is set to pass into law that would keep children out of drag shows.

The Pride Alliance of the Treasure Coast posted to Facebook that the event was going to be limited to people 21 years and older after several talks with the Port St. Lucie officials, per WFLA.

In a Facebook post the group stated, “As all of you know, the political climate that we are currently in has us all very concerned for our community. After multiple meetings with city officials, it is with a heavy heart that Pride Alliance of the Treasure Coast has to announce that this weekend’s Pridefest will now be a 21 and older event.”

“The city has decided that with the likelihood that the Governor will sign the latest bill into effect this evening, that we will need to be on the side of caution and has required us to make this necessary change. We are obviously upset and dishearten[ed] that it has come to this. We also regret to announce that we will have to cancel our plans to bring back our beloved parade.”

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Transgender Teacher Fired After Allegedly Threatening to Shoot Students

A transgender teacher at a Florida middle school was allowed to remain on campus for several weeks after allegedly making disturbing comments about shooting students and “having bad thoughts.”

In a statement released Friday, the Florida Department of Education responded to the situation regarding student safety at Fox Chapel Middle School in Hernando County, saying the teacher, Ashlee Renczkowski, has been removed from the school.

The department noted that the removal happened only after state officials raised their concerns with Hernando County School District Superintendent John Stratton Wednesday evening.

According to an incident report obtained by parental rights group “Moms for Liberty,” a school resource officer temporarily assigned to Fox Chapel Middle School was notified by Assistant Principal Kerry Thornton and Guidance Counselor Kimberly Walby on March 24 regarding Renczkowski making “concerning statements about self-harm” and possibly shooting students.

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Trans Florida teacher ‘Ashlee’ who allegedly said they were ‘going to shoot the kids’ then themselves remains in classroom despite parents’ complaints

Parents of students at Fox Chapel Middle School in Hernando County, Florida, are demanding answers from the district after a teacher made concerning comments allegedly made about harming children and themselves. Although the district investigated the comments and found them concerning, the teacher was not fired and is back in the classroom.

Several parents contacted FOX 13, with each sharing the same story that the teacher made comments about harming students and then herself.

The district stated that the comments were made out of frustration with student behavior, but refused to divulge exactly what was said, leading to tension between parents and the board. “While the teacher in question did make a comment to colleagues that was concerning,” the school principal could be heard saying in a recording sent to parents on Monday. “Staff and law enforcement determined the comment was not an imminent threat to the campus, but was instead an expression of frustration at student behavior.”

A sheriff’s office report from March 24, obtained by Moms for Liberty Hernando County, stated that a school resource officer responded to a report from Assistant Principal Kerry Thornton and Guidance Counselor Kimberly Walby, who reported that a teacher had made statements about harming themself and possibly shooting students.

Thornton told the resource officer that at around 3 pm, she was visiting classrooms and walked into teacher Ashlee Renczkowski’s classroom. Thornton asked how the teacher was doing, to which Renczkowski responded, “Not good, I’m having bad thoughts.”

Thornton radioed Walby and said that Renczkowski was coming to see her. According to the report, “Ashlee walked to Kimberley’s office and started to explain that she learned about a social media post where people were talking negatively about Ashlee’s sexual orientation.”

The post in question was in regard to Renczkowski and Renczkowski’s wife, Fawn Renczkowski, who also teaches at the school.

According to Fox Chapel’s staff directory, Ashlee Renczkowski teaches mathematics for grades six through eight, and Fawn Renczkowski teaches science for grades six through eight.

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Florida professor leaves $190,000-a-year job following claim he faked data on racism studies

A Florida State University criminology professor abruptly left his $190,000-a-year position following allegations that he fudged data on racism studies during his 16-year tenure.

Eric Stewart, who had six of his studies retracted, has been absent from the college since mid-March after a new investigation over his work renewed scrutiny over claims that he fabricated data by altering sample sizes to make the results appear more racist, the Florida Standard reports.

Stewart was first accused of falsifying data by Justin Pickett, a University of Albany criminology professor who co-authored a report on race and crime with Stewart in 2011.

In the study, the criminologists were looking to test whether the public was increasingly demanding longer sentences for black and Hispanic criminals as those minority populations grew.

In his 2019 complaint, Pickett said their findings showed no relationship between the growth of minority groups and the severity of criminal sentences handed to them.

Despite the result, the paper was published with “altered” data to claim there was a correlation, with Pickett noting that many of the changes appeared to have been tacked on just before publication.

The biggest change Pickett pointed out was their sample size growing to 1,184 respondents even though they only had 500, and that the study’s conclusion came from handpicking the data from 91 counties instead of the full list of 326.

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Founder of “Protect Our Kids First” arrested for allegedly downloading child sex abuse material

Michael Dolce, a 53-year-old lawyer known for representing child sexual abuse survivors, was recently arrested by FBI agents at his West Palm Beach, Florida home. Dolce, who founded a group called Protect Our Kids First Inc., was allegedly laying in his bed and downloading sexually explicit images of children when agents broke down his front door.

According to an FBI affidavit, after Dolce’s March 15 arrest, agents found 1,997 images and five videos of child pornography on his computer. The images were of male and female children ages five to 12, including several of a prepubescent girl in a subfolder titled “Sweet Pedo Stars.” Dolce could receive a minimum of 20 years in prison if found guilty of possessing child pornography.

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Ron DeSantis Signed COVID Law Allowing Forced Injections by ‘Any Means Necessary’

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed COVID legislation in 2021 giving state health authorities the power to forcibly quarantine and inject anyone who “state health authorities” deem to be a risk to public safety, using “any means necessary” to do so.

On May 3rd, 2021, Florida GOP Governor Ron DeSantis signed Senate Bill 2006 into law, giving state health authorities massive power over the people of Florida, while authorizing the imprisonment and forced injection of anyone deemed a risk by those authorities. At the time of the bill’s signing, DeSantis and others in Florida’s government presented it as a ban on so-called “vaccine passports,” but buried within the legislation is an unprecedented attack on the civil liberties of American Citizens.

As a result of DeSantis-signed SB 2006, state health authorities have the power to “order an individual to be examined, tested, vaccinated, treated, isolated, or quarantined for communicable diseases,” if those health authorities believe the diseases “have significant morbidity or mortality and present a severe danger to public health.”

In the case of COVID, which has a more than 99% survival rate, state health authorities made this exact claim and, though false, it led to the biggest clampdown on civil liberties in American history.

Furthermore, SB 2006 states that if an individual is deemed to pose “a danger to the public health, the State Health Officer may subject the individual to isolation or quarantine.”

“If there is no practical method to isolate or quarantine the individual, the State Health Officer may use any means necessary to vaccinate or treat the individual.”

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TV Channel Had To Cut Feed When Gov. DeSantis Read Pornographic School Book, Reporter Says

On Wednesday, a TV channel had to cut its live feed after Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) read aloud a pornographic book kept in Florida schools, according to a reporter.

DeSantis held a press conference Wednesday, titled “Exposing the Book Ban Hoax,” in which he presented a five-minute long video, reading from books the administration had banned from classrooms across the state.

The books include “Gender Queer,” which depicts masturbation and oral sex between girls; “Flamer,” which describes explicit sex acts between boys; and “Let’s Talk About It,” which explains how men and women can masturbate and shows how to perform anal sex.

“Some of the media had to cut their feed when books with graphic content were displayed that were found in K-12 school libraries,” DeSantis press secretary Bryan Griffin said on Twitter.

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