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Governor Signs Bill Allowing Armed School Teachers for Classroom Defense

Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill Wednesday that’ll let more Florida teachers carry guns in school, the latest response to last year’s mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.

DeSantis signed the bill in private and issued no statement. The Republican-led Florida House of Representatives voted to send the bill to the governor last week, while the GOP-controlled state Senate passed the measure the week before.

The new law expands an existing school “guardian” program and allows any teacher to volunteer to carry a weapon if his or her school district approves. Would-be volunteers must undergo at least 144 hours of police-style training, psychiatric evaluation and drug screening. Under a previous law, passed immediately after the February 2018 Parkland shooting, only teachers who had another role at school, such as sports coach, were eligible to carry weapons on campus. . .

The bill was opposed by most Democrats and teachers’ unions, which argued that the introduction of more weapons in schools would place children at risk, increase the dangers of mistaken shootings and lead to more violence against African-American students because of inherent biases. Supporters of the bill said arming teachers is the best way to protect children from future school shooters. Republicans emphasized that the program is voluntary, and that law enforcement in some rural districts could be 15 minutes or more from a school if a shooter attacks.

It’s unclear how many Florida school districts in the state will approve of expanding the “guardian” program. Currently, 25 of the state’s 67 school districts take part in the program, but boards in some of Florida’s most populous counties have already opted out, preferring to use trained police officers for school security. (Read more from “Governor Signs Bill Allowing Armed School Teachers for Classroom Defense” HERE)

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Two 14-Year-Old Girls Arrested for Conspiracy to Murder Nine Other Students

On Thursday, two 14-year-old girls from Florida were arrested on conspiracy to murder charges after a teacher found a folder that outlined plans to kill nine other students.

According to WTSP, affidavits state that on Wednesday, a teacher at Avon Park Middle School saw the two girls acting “hysterical” as they searched for a folder. The teacher claimed one of the girls said that they would be arrested if the folder was found by someone else; the teacher said the other girl responded, “I’m just going to tell them it’s a prank if they call me or if they find it.”

According to the Highland County Sheriff’s Office, the teacher found the folder, which was labeled “private info,” “do not open,” and “project 11/9.” The eight sheets of paper inside the folder allegedly adumbrated a scheme to murder the other students whose full names or initials were listed, and the word “guns” was also printed there. The teacher then notified the school resource officer and other school officials.

The Daily Mail reports that an incident report stated that the papers “described how the juvenile suspects would obtain firearms to kill the victims and dispose of their remains, ‘specifically burning and burying their bodies.’”

WTSP adds, “Also included in the folder were hand-written notes describing the clothing the girls would wear during the killing spree, such as gloves, and how they would look. ‘NO NAILS’ and ‘No Hair Showing from the moment we put on our clothes.’” (Read more from “Two 14-Year-Old Girls Arrested for Conspiracy to Murder Nine Other Students” HERE)

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Shock Video: Inmate Punches Public Defender in Head During Court Hearing

By Fox News. A Florida public defender was taken to the hospital after an inmate approached her from behind and punched her in the head during a bond hearing at the Broward County courthouse on Wednesday.

Assistant public defender Julie Chase was standing next to a female when William Green — who was in court for one count of touch or strike battery — walked up to the attorney from behind and punched her in the head, WSVN reported.

A video showed Chase falling to the floor next to the courtroom podium after Green swung his left fist. Courtroom bailiffs rushed in and appeared to tackle the inmate to the ground as Chase got up and walked away from the scene. . .

It’s unclear why the inmate attacked Chase.

Broward Judge Jackie Powell was looking through documents pertaining to Walker’s case when the incident occurred. Powell looked at the monitor and asked, “What happened?” to which another public defender suggested a recess. (Read more from “Shock Video: Inmate Punches Public Defender in Head During Court Hearing” HERE)

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Public Defender Punched by Inmate in Broward Courthouse

By Miami News 7. [William] Green was already facing a charge of touch or strike battery after he allegedly punched an employee of Florida Medical Center while being held under Florida’s Baker Act law.

“If he did something in the hospital, that’s where they’re supposed to keep him to give him injection or medication, restrain him,” Sharon Green, William Green’s mother, said.

Howard Finkelstein, Chase’s boss, agrees with Green’s mother.

“Had the officer followed the law and allowed Mr. Green to continue treatment for his psychosis, the incident would not have occurred,” Finkelstein wrote in a letter to Broward Sheriff Gregory Tony. “Mentally ill persons who commit minor criminal offenses in Baker Act facilities should not be arrested and transported to the jail. What happened today should not have happened and should never happen again.”

According to the arrest report, Green was admitted to the hospital “due to his severe violent history.” (Read more from “Public Defender Punched by Inmate in Broward Courthouse” HERE)

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Student Shoots, Kills Herself in School After Asking to Use the Bathroom

A Florida high school student committed suicide early Wednesday morning in her school’s auditorium after asking permission to use the bathroom, officials said.

The 17-year-old junior, who was not identified, reportedly asked her teacher at Lake Mary High School near Orlando if she could be excused to use the restroom around 7:45 a.m. About five minutes later, the teacher said she heard a gunshot come from the auditorium. . .

Seminole County Sheriff Dennis Lemma said during a press conference that there were no staff or students in the auditorium when the shooting took place. After hearing the gunshot, the school’s nurse attempted to revive the young woman. It’s not known how the student got access to the handgun.

Lemma highlighted the community’s mental health resources and encouraged those experiencing depressive or suicidal thoughts to get in touch.

“What a horrible tragedy,” he said, according to My13 News. “We want to remind the public if there are signs of depression…there are services, love, guidance and faith.” (Read more from “Student Shoots, Kills Herself in School After Asking to Use the Bathroom” HERE)

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School Hires Combat Vets With Semiautomatic Rifles to Protect Students From Active Shooters

A school in Florida is taking school safety so seriously that it has hired two combat veterans armed with semiautomatic rifles to patrol and guard the campus against potential threats, according to The New York Times.

Manatee School for the Arts in Palmetto, Florida, hired the school guardians to comply with state legislation requiring schools to have at least one “safe-school” officer. Principal Bill Jones said they have good reason to go above and beyond the minimum requirements.

“We’re not looking for a fair fight,” Jones said of potential active shooter situations. “We’re looking at an overwhelming advantage.”

One of the guards has 15 years of infantry experience, and the second veteran guardian will start working later in February. Jones wanted combat veterans who can be trusted to react quickly and correctly under fire. . .

“Assault rifles, whether you are for them or against them, are prolific in our society,” Chief Scott Tyler said in December to the Herald-Tribune. “So why would we not want the school guardian to have parity with that potential threat?” (Read more from “Florida School Hires Combat Vets With Semiautomatic Rifles to Protect Students From Active Shooters” HERE)

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Ex-Police Chief Gets Three Years in Prison for Framing Black Men

A former Florida police chief who admitted to framing black men for crimes they did not commit was sentenced to three years in prison on Tuesday.

A federal judge in Miami imposed the sentence on ex-Biscayne Park police chief Raimundo Atesiano, who pleaded guilty earlier this year to directing his police officers to frame innocent black men for a series of unsolved burglaries.

He admitted he wanted to appease community leaders and polish the department’s property crimes records.

“When I took the job, I was not prepared,” the 54-year-old man told the judge on Tuesday, the Miami Herald reported. “I made some very, very bad decisions.”

Atesiano, who faced a maximum 10-year sentence, pleaded guilty in September to a conspiracy charge of depriving the three suspects of their civil rights because he and the officers charged them without a legal basis. (Read more from “Ex-Police Chief Gets Three Years in Prison for Framing Black Men” HERE)

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Florida Senate Results Revealed

By Daily Wire. Florida Republican Senate candidate Rick Scott has defeated Democratic Senator Bill Nelson after a manual recount put Scott ahead by approximately 10,000 votes.

“Barring any further legal challenges from the Nelson campaign, the outgoing governor will become Florida’s junior senator in January, joining fellow Republican Marco Rubio in the Senate,” USA Today reported on Sunday. “It will be the first time since Reconstruction that the state has had two GOP senators.”

Scott announced that Nelson conceded the race, saying in a statement: “I just spoke with Senator Bill Nelson, who graciously conceded, and I thanked him for his years of public service.” (Read more from “Florida Senate Results Revealed” HERE)

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As Florida Recount Ends, Sen. Nelson Concedes Race to Scott

By AP. Sen. Bill Nelson, a Florida political icon who first arrived on Capitol Hill in the decades when Democrats dominated this presidential battleground state, conceded his bitterly close re-election bid to Republican Rick Scott on Sunday after a bruising recount left Nelson thousands of votes short of the outgoing governor.

Nelson gave up his quest after days of tense and often acrimonious recounting wrapped up at midday Sunday, when Florida’s counties had to turn in their official results. Florida will not officially certify the final results until Tuesday, but the totals showed Nelson trailing Scott by more than 10,000 votes.

“It has been a rewarding journey as well as a very humbling experience,” Nelson said in a videotaped statement. “I was not victorious in this race but I still wish to strongly re-affirm the cause for which we fought: A public office is a public trust.” (Read more from “As Florida Recount Ends, Sen. Nelson Concedes Race to Scott” HERE)

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Report: Florida Democrats Plotted Statewide Effort to Use Altered Election Forms to Fix Absentee Ballots After Deadline

The day after the 2018 midterm elections, Florida Democrats attempted to launch a statewide effort to use fraudulent election forms to fix signature problems on absentee ballots after the state’s deadline, a blockbuster report from the Naples Daily News says.

Federal prosecutors are already investigating altered election forms from Broward, Santa Rosa, Citrus, and Okaloosa Counties for possible voter fraud. Ana Ceballos, writing from Tallahassee, Fla., reports that an email obtained by the USA TODAY NETWORK-Florida shows Democratic party leaders attempted to organize an effort beyond those counties “to give voters the altered forms to fix improper absentee ballots after the Nov. 5 deadline.”

“Democratic party leaders provided staffers with copies of a form, known as a ‘cure affidavit,’ that had been modified to include an inaccurate Nov. 8 deadline,” Ceballos writes.

The election document was a state form to fix absentee ballots with signature problems. The original document provides that corrections must be submitted “no later than 5 p.m. on the day before the election.”

Three contested statewide elections, including the Senate race between Republican Rick Scott and Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., are headed for recounts in which these absentee ballots may make a difference.

The Democratic Party collected a list of Florida voters whose ballots were flagged with signature problems and their contact information. Jennifer Kim, the party’s central Florida deputy field director, sent an email to party staffers on Nov. 7 explaining how volunteers and staffers could have these voters correct their ballots after the deadline. She attached the altered form to her email with copies in both English and Spanish.

“The voters MUST print out the form and sign it by hand,” Kim wrote.

Kim’s email instructed staff and volunteers to use the list of voters to contact about their signature problems on the absentee ballots, to complete the form on the phone with the voter and to email the completed form to the voter.

The voter was instructed to print the form and to sign it. And Kim’s email instructed the party workers to tell voters to deliver the signed form to their local election office.

Kim told staffers that voters should reply back to them after they delivered the forms at the party’s email, [email protected]. That email was also included in documents Florida election officials referred to federal prosecutors in connection to the altered forms received by Broward and the other three counties.

“If needed (party) staff or volunteer should go pick up their affidavit and deliver it for them if they are not able to deliver by 5 p.m. Thursday. (Each office should identify a runner that can do this.),” her email states.

A Palm Beach Democrat who spoke to the Daily News said the plan was to have voters fix and submit as many absentee ballots as possible with the altered forms, hoping that they would be counted if a judge rules to include such absentee ballots in the vote count.

On Thursday, Chief Judge Mark Walker of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida ruled that voters should have until Saturday to fix their absentee ballot signatures, which the Daily News reports could mean the corrected ballots fixed by these altered forms will be counted. Walker was appointed to the District Court bench by President Barack Obama.

Florida Department of State officials argue that altering the forms constitutes a criminal offense.

“Making or using an altered form is a criminal offense under Florida law,” wrote State Department lawyer Bradley McVay in referring the altered forms to federal prosecutors. “More fundamentally, altering a form in a manner that provides the incorrect date for a voter to cure a defect (or an incorrect method as it related to provisional ballots) imposes a burden on the voter significant enough to frustrate the voter’s ability to vote.”

So let’s get this straight. Florida law gives voters a deadline to fix incorrect absentee ballots before Election Day. The Democratic Party schemes to have some voters who did not meet this deadline fix their ballots after Election Day. They alter election forms with an incorrect date to accomplish this and hope some Florida judge rules in their favor that the deadline established by state law disenfranchises voters. Then, an Obama-appointed federal judge rules that the deadline was wrong and gives voters till Saturday to fix their ballots, potentially letting the ballots corrected with these fraudulent forms be counted.

If that’s not election cheating, what is? (For more from the author of “Report: Florida Democrats Plotted Statewide Effort to Use Altered Election Forms to Fix Absentee Ballots After Deadline” please click HERE)

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School Punishes Male Teacher for Refusing to Watch a Naked Girl in the Boys’ Locker Room

By The Federalist. A Florida school district allowed a self-described transgender female student regular access to the boys’ locker room, with no advance warning to the boys or their parents. The first time she walked in, she caught “boys (literally) with their pants down, causing them embarrassment and concern by the fact that they had been observed changing by an obvious girl,” says a complaint letter to Pasco County School District from Liberty Counsel, a pro-bono constitutional law firm.

With a “gag order,” school administrators forbade teachers from talking about the change, and ordered a male P.E. teacher to supervise the potentially undressed girl in the Chasco Middle School locker room, the letter says. When he refused to “knowingly place himself in a position to observe a minor female in the nude or otherwise in a state of undress,” administrators told him “he will be transferred to another school as discipline for ‘not doing your job in the locker room.’” (Read more from “School Punishes Male Teacher for Refusing to Watch a Naked Girl in the Boys’ Locker Room” HERE)

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Male Gym Teacher Punished for Refusing to Oversee Transgender ‘Male’ Get Undressed

By Daily Wire. A physical education teacher in Florida was punished for refusing to oversee a biologically female middle schooler who identifies as male potentially get undressed in the boys’ locker room. The school, stunningly, allowed the female student to have access to the boys’ locker room without so much as informing the male students who would be sharing the locker room with the girl or the students’ parents.

According to a compliant letter from Liberty Counsel to Pasco County School District, the female student caught “boys (literally) with their pants down, causing them embarrassment and concern by the fact that they had been observed changing by an obvious girl,” reports The Federalist.

Teachers and administrators were barred from speaking about the transgender policy, and when a male P.E. teacher refused to supervise the boys’ locker room with the female student, he was reprimanded and told he would be transferred to a different school:

“With a ‘gag order,’ school administrators forbade teachers from talking about the change, and ordered a male P.E. teacher to supervise the potentially undressed girl in the Chasco Middle School locker room,” the letter says. When he refused to “knowingly place himself in a position to observe a minor female in the nude or otherwise in a state of undress,” administrators told him “he will be transferred to another school as discipline for ‘not doing your job in the locker room.'”

According to Liberty Counsel attorney Richard Mast, the male teacher, who is also a coach at the school, was first threatened to be put on administrative leave via email; he was informed that his refusal to oversee a potentially undressed female in the locker room would “not be tolerated.” (Read more from “Male Gym Teacher Punished for Refusing to Oversee Transgender ‘Male’ Get Undressed” HERE)

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Judge Rules for Rick Scott. Florida Supervisor Must Release Public Records.

On Friday, Florida Judge Carol-Lisa Phillips ruled in favor of Florida Governor Rick Scott, who was ahead in votes in his race for the Senate seat held by incumbent Democratic Senator Bill Nelson when the polls closed Tuesday night, and had filed suit along with the National Republican Senatorial Committee against Broward County election supervisor Brenda Snipes in order to force her to release public records surrounding the votes in Broward County. The lawsuit stated that Snipes was “unwilling to disclose records revealing how many electors voted, how many ballots have been canvassed, and how many ballots remain to be canvassed.”

The lawsuit stated:

Voting in the 2018 General Election concluded November 6, 2018. Two days after voting has concluded, the Supervisor Of Elections is unwilling to disclose records revealing how many electors voted, how many ballots have been canvassed, and how many ballots remain to be canvassed. The lack of transparency raises substantial concerns about the validity of the election process. An emergency hearing is necessary as the Canvassing Board is obligated to submit the unofficial elections results to the Division of Elections by noon November 10, 2018. A recount in at least two, possibly three, of the statewide races appears likely. Plaintiffs seek an immediate, emergency hearing of this matter pursuant to section 119.11, Florida Statutes; an Order from this Court declaring Defendants to be in breach of their constitutional and statutory duties to permit access to public records; and an Order from this Court compelling Defendants to provide Plaintiffs with access to those records.

The judge found that Snipes, the Broward Supervisor of Elections, violated public records act and the Florida constitution, and must provide public records requested by Scott and NRSC. (Read more from “Judge Rules for Rick Scott. Florida Supervisor Must Release Public Records.” HERE)

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