Florida News that impacts you – June 18th
Bottom Line: Your daily recap of the some of the biggest news from around the state that impacts you in South Florida.
- 750 million genetically modified mosquitoes have been approved by the Florida Department of Agriculture to be released in the Florida Keys. The company behind the experiment, Oxitec, has been working on related projects over the past decade – with at best, mixed results. The modified mosquitoes are designed to breed only male mosquitoes which don’t bite. A specific date for the release hasn’t been announced.
- A consortium of Florida police chiefs and law enforcement experts have created a new panel within the Florida Police Chiefs Association focused on police reform. The Accountability and Societal Change Subcommittee,announced an intent to implement an “Eight Can’t Wait” plan for police reform to standardize policing statewide. Those reforms include:
- Bans on use of chokeholds and strangleholds
- Requirements that officers de-escalate situations,where possible,by communicating with subjects, maintaining distance, and otherwise eliminating the need to use force.
- Requirements that officers give a verbal warning in all situations before using deadly force.
- Requirements that officers exhaust all other alternatives, including non-force and less lethal force options, before resorting to deadly force.
- Requirements that officers intervene and stop excessive force used by other officers and report incidents immediately to a supervisor.
- Absolute bans on officers shooting at moving vehicles.
- Establishment of force continuums that restrict the most severe types of force to the most extreme situations and creates clear policy restrictions on the use of each police weapon and tactic.
- Requirements that officers report each time they use force or threaten to use force against civilians.
- With the recent spike in COVID-19 cases in Florida, state officials issued a new emergency directive which mandates nursing home staff be tested a minimum of every two weeks until the order is lifted.