Florida police raid home of former state coronavirus data manager

Enlarge / Workers removing a sign from a drive-through COVID-19 testing site in Orlando, Florida, in October 2020. (credit: Paul Hennessy | NurPhoto | Getty Images)

Police on Monday raided the Florida home of data scientist Rebekah Jones, who alleged in May that she was fired from her job collating COVID-19 data for the state because she refused to "manipulate" data to make the governor's agenda look more favorable.

"At 8:30 this morning, state police came into my house and took all my hardware and tech," Jones said in a Twitter thread on Monday afternoon. Her initial post included a 30-second video of armed officers pointing guns up a staircase and shouting for Jones' husband and children to come down before another officer shouted, "search warrant!" loudly to no one in particular.

"They pointed a gun in my face. They pointed guns at my kids," Jones added. "They took my phone and the computer I use every day to post the case numbers in Florida, and school cases for the entire country. They took evidence of corruption at the state level."

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