More details regarding the Tate Homecoming Witch hunt

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This story is consistent with most cases I have researched. There is this dichotomy of cases the state attorney’s office prosecutes that are factually anemic and the cases that office refuses to prosecute regardless of abundant proof of countless crimes. Victims are created in both types of cases. What do you do when you are the object of a prosecutor’s tenacious claim of wrongdoing, while you are innocent? Is it worse than when someone has taken advantage of you or your family and that person thumbs their nose at you, denying you justice?

Laura Carroll and Emily Grover have been casted into the role of wrongly accused victims. I will delve into the “whys” in another post. What I wanted to bring out is the evidence presented. To give a bit of background, after the voting was complete, administrator, Carolyn Gray sorted through the votes. She is familiar with this app, Election Runner. She analyzed the data provided. According to her, she started deleting “suspicious votes” (as she had done in prior elections) she stopped deleting and sent the info to the school district to evaluate. The problem is we have no idea how many votes she deleted that might have altered the results or how many votes that were deleted that would point to someone else? We have incomplete information that is being used to prosecute a woman and her daughter. WTF?

Also brought out was the time the votes came in, according to Ms. Gray, there could be a lag in how said votes came in, which has come under scrutiny as well. The way the votes came into the program, is also being called “fishy”. But is it fishy if there is a lag??

Here are a couple of points in her deposition that I think deserve some attention:

So, we don’t know how many votes were suspicious and were deleted by Ms. Gray. My question on this is: if evidence is tampered with providing a clip of what happened, how do we know that data wouldn’t implicate someone else or give a fuller view of what we are looking at? Capturing some evidence that points to Emily or her family seems moot on its face because we don’t know the context of the data we now have. If you found a dead body and you cleaned up some blood around the body, wouldn’t that be destroying evidence? If you think someone hacked your computer, wouldn’t it be destruction of evidence to delete the proof of such? In both cases, it would significantly alter the outcome of any trial. You have unknown info swirling around that could have potential to exculpate people; why is that not being seen?

There are a couple of points to make Ms. Gray’s participation in this case sketchy; so far, we have a criminal case initiated with incomplete evidence; an administrator assuming guilt based on said incomplete evidence; the same administrator, did not authenticate the data (the portion she didn’t delete) before she sought to escalate this. Because she deleted some, authentication is necessary to see if any foul play occurred at all.

To me, it appears like they are backdooring this issue of authentication by using the records on FOCUS, the county site rather than that of the Election Runner app. This is deceptive info. It may show logins to FOCUS but it does not show the Election Runner results. It depends on the authenticity of the Election Runner app.

Just to clarify. One cannot enter the Election Runner app through FOCUS. It’s not possible. The two programs have no connection except that the school board believe that info gathered from FOCUS access to get the information that was needed to fraudulently vote for other students.

Stay Tuned!!

Pensacola Homecoming scandal: yOU KNOW THIS CASE, RIGHT?

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I am sure you heard about the Homecoming Scandal that happened in Pensacola last year. As I understood from the news stories I read, this case was akin to the Cheerleader murder from Texas. You know, an overzealous mother who murdered her daughter’s competition, thus securing her daughter’s place as a cheerleader. Minus the murder, this was the same scenario, at least as it was portrayed as by the local media. Laura Carroll, Vice-Principal of Bellview Elementary either through her own access to Escambia County School District internal server (FOCUS) or her daughter, Emily Grover, used her login, surreptitiously to cast votes for Tate Homecoming Queen in 2020. The mother & daughter were arrested March 15, 2021, for unlawful use of a two-way communication device, offenses against users of computer, computer systems, computer networks & electronic devices and conspiracy to commit these offenses. Emly was expelled, despite having no disciplinary record and being an exemplary student about to graduate in 6 weeks at the time of the arrest.

According to PNJ, Tuesday, March 16, 2021:

“In October 2020, the school district flagged hundreds of votes for Tate High School’s homecoming court as fraudulent. FDLE was contacted and special agents launched an investigation.

FDLE special agents discovered that 117 of the fraudulent votes originated from the same IP address within a short period of time and they tied that IP address to Carroll & Grover’s computer usage.

FDLE spokesperson Gretl Plessinger told the News Journal, agents learned that Carroll & Grover used FOCUS to cast the fraudulent votes to win homecoming queen at Tate High School….

Nine students and one teacher provided written statements to authorities that detailed how Grover had spoken about accessing her mother’s FOCUS account or had seen her access the county system for almost 4 years, according to the arrest warrant.”

This seems cut and dry, doesn’t it? Hardly. My immediate question was, with this access and purported “abuse” of info, was there no other compromised records, involving school grades, medical records, disciplinary records, student ID numbers etc? It seems to me that there are more serious violations that may actually warrant harsh punishment—not homecoming court votes. A teen who has this sort of info available would surely exploit it. Yet, that we don’t have in this case. The FOCUS site is chalked full of information that anyone with a password could exploit. That is what I would expect if someone was trying to abuse that particular website. While Carroll’s login was largely “view only” info, the voluminous privacy-protected info that potentially could have been weaponized was never compromised.

The FDLE investigator, Stephanie Cassidy, could not legitimize any of the evidence used in this case. That does not surprise me but the fact that anyone pursued criminal charges and ruined a young girl’s life with such flimsy evidence.

Here are a few excerpts from the deposition of Stephanie Cassidy:

The craziest thing though is the way Tate High handled it. Here is a clip from NorthEscambia.com:

Emily Rose Grover was 17-year old juvenile at the time of her arrest in April by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. She turned 18 just a few days later, and will now be tried as an adult.
Grover and her mother Laura Carroll, former assistant principal at Bellview Elementary School, were charged by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement with one count each of felony offenses against users of computers, computer systems, computer networks, and electronic devices; felony unlawful use of a two-way communications device, felony criminal use of personally identifiable information, and conspiracy to commit these offenses. The misdemeanor conspiracy charge against both has been upgraded by prosecutors to a felony count.
One edited photo in this year’s Tate High School yearbook shows Grover’s face covered with clipart of a horse that resembles the school’s mascot. The horse’s rear-end was used to cover Grover’s face, and that is the part that has upset many. The photo is above; note that NorthEscambia.com has blurred the faces of other individuals in the picture.
“They covered her face with a horse’s rear,” one parent wrote in an email to NorthEscambia.com. “That’s just too much and should have never happened.”
“We are recalling those yearbooks to fix that problem,” Escambia County School District Superintendent Dr. Tim Smith said. “Somebody went in and made an edit that shouldn’t have happened.”
The yearbook was published after Grover’s arrest. Parents tell us some students did not receive their yearbooks after the photo was discovered.

‘Gary Marsh