Florida: Big Meech Reportedly Released From Federal Prison

Demetrius “Big Meech” Flenory is out from behind bars and now he is finishing his sentence in comfier surroundings in Florida. Big Meech was transferred from Federal Correctional Institution Coleman Low in Wildwood to community confinement overseen by the Bureau of Prisons’s Miami Residential Reentry Management Office. Big Meech is now serving his sentence in a halfway house.

Big Meech was arrested in 2005, and in 2008 he was sentenced to 30 years in prison after being convicted on charges related to drug trafficking and money laundering. Earlier this year a judge shortened Big Meech sentence by almost 3 years. It is unclear when Big Meech will officially finish his sentence but the big thing here is he is no longer in federal prison.

On October 10th 2020, the eye of Hurricane Milton, which traveled overnight from near the Tampa Bay area east toward Orlando and Cape Canaveral, is now moving past the Florida peninsula and exiting the east coast. But the storm is still slamming parts of the coast with onshore wind that could create tornadoes along Florida’s Treasure Coast. Daytona Beach is recording wind gusts of 83 mph.

Storm surge of up to 4 feet is still possible along the coast as the storm departs.

Heavy rains also still pose a risk, with some places receiving months’ worth of rainfall within one day. Flash flooding is now being reported in Hillsborough County, where Tampa is located, stretching north and east toward Orlando where flood warnings are still in place. That mix of water could cause even worse flooding that might not drain until the hurricane has traveled farther away.

On October 9th 2024, Hurricane Milton was 405 miles southwest of Tampa, Florida. Milton’s wind speeds have slightly decreased, but it remains a Category 5 storm. Milton has maximum sustained wind speeds of 160 mph. Milton has picked up lateral speed, moving toward Florida at 12 mph and it was expected to travel more quickly overnight. Milton was expected to make landfall on Florida’s west coast near Tampa, but it is critical to remember that even at 24 hours out, it is still not possible to pinpoint an an exact landfall location.

Forecasters with the National Hurricane Center (NHC) urged residents to evacuate or make other preparations. Milton has the potential to be one of the most destructive hurricanes on record for west-central Florida. As hurricanes are projected to get stronger due to climate change, real changes must be made to Florida’s infrastructure. Climate change is happening quicker than anticipated.

For now, the City of St. Petersburg is prepared for Hurricane Milton ahead of the storm’s arrival.

The city has also invested in infrastructure strengthening aimed at helping protect its wastewater plants. There is a project under construction, a $70 million project in response to the issue that would raise that plant to withstand 11 feet of storm surge. That is progress but now the storms are even more powerful than that. On October 7th 2020, as Milton churns in the Gulf of Mexico and threatens Florida’s coast, the NHC is closely monitoring the storm’s path and strength.

Milton was moving erratically through the Gulf of Mexico and rapidly gaining strength, becoming a Category 2 storm. Milton is expected to make landfall along Florida’s west coast, possibly as a major hurricane. While models can change a lot, officials say direct impacts are expected in the Tampa area. Milton is expected to to continue east-southeast on its path, followed by a turn toward the east and northeast. Milton is expected to rapidly intensify, becoming a major hurricane before making landfall in Florida.

Milton is currently 750 miles west-southwest of Tampa with maximum sustained winds of 100 mph and a minimum central pressure of 972 mb. The system is currently moving east-southeast at 8 mph. The greatest impacts from Hurricane Milton are storm surge, rainfall, and high winds. Storm surge from Milton will raise water levels and create large and destructive waves.

Rainfall is expected to add to the destruction, with some portions of Florida seeing up to 15 inches of rain.

These conditions could lead to flash, urban and areal flooding, the NHC says, adding that there is a risk for moderate to major river flooding. All interests in Florida should brace for sustains winds and gusts of hurricane strength. In Central Florida, residents could see gusts of more than 70 mph. Hurricane Milton comes right on the heels of Hurricane Helene’s devastating landfall in the Florida Big Bend region as a Category 4 storm.

Many Florida residents are still recovering from intense flooding, damaging storm surge and extreme wreckage from winds topping 140 mph. In September 2020, in Florida on Fort Lauderdale Beach, those with months of quarantine-driven bar withdrawal showed up, showed off and toasted each other back to some semblance of normal life. In an unexpected and surprising announcement, Governor Ron DeSantis lifted all restrictions on restaurants and other businesses in Florida in a move to reopen the state’s economy despite the spread of covid.

With that green light, bars and clubs were allowed to reopen. It also did away with any fines related to covid. Florida reported 2,795 new cases of covid, along with 14,022 resident deaths and 168 non-resident deaths from covid. Miami’s Mayor Francis Suarez has more than a few concerns. One of the things that concerns Suarez the most is the mask mandate.

Suarez is concerned that the cases are going to continue to spike and then Florida may have to go back to a situation that it is working so hard to avoid.

Suarez added that DeSantis’ order is confusing and risky. DeSantis’ order is not very clear as to what can and can not be done. Suarez’s counterpart in Fort Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis also weighed in. The governor’s order was so open ended that business owners really had no direction as to what to do. Broward County issued a new executive order five hours after DeSantis, which states that bars still must comply with distancing requirements and capacity limitations.

The order allows bars, pubs, nightclubs, adult entertainment establishments, banquet halls, breweries, cigar bars, and any other establishment that is licensed by the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulations to sell food and/or alcohol to operate, provided they are in compliance with Attachment 2 of the county’s Emergency Order. Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber called the move by DeSantis political and unsafe in South Florida, which has had the highest concentration of the state’s covid cases. DeSantis just wants to follow Trump’s lead as much as possible.

It does no one any good to not continue to respect the safety protocols. In August 2020, a plan to release over 750 million genetically modified mosquitoes into the Florida Keys in 2021 and 2022 received final approval from local authorities, against the objection of many local residents and a coalition of environmental advocacy groups. The proposal had already won state and federal approval.

Now the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District (FKMCD) has given the final permission needed.

Approved by the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) in May 2020, the pilot project is designed to test if a genetically modified pest is a viable alternative to spraying insecticides to control the Aedes aegypti. It is a species of mosquito that carries several deadly diseases, such as Zika, dengue, chikungunya, and yellow fever. The genetically modified pest, named OX5034, has been altered to produce female offspring that die in the larval stage, well before hatching and growing large enough to bite and spread diseases.

Only the female mosquito bites for blood, which she needs to mature her eggs. Males feed only on nectar, and are thus not a carrier for disease. The pest also won federal approval to be released into Harris County, Texas, beginning in 2021, according to Oxitec, the American-owned, British-based company that developed the genetically modified organism (GMO).

The EPA granted Oxitec’s request after years of investigating the impact of the GMO mosquito on human and environmental health. This is an exciting development because it represents the ground-breaking work of hundreds of passionate people over more than a decade in multiple countries, all of whom want to protect communities from dengue, Zika, yellow fever, and other vector-borne diseases. However, state and local approval for the Texas release has not been granted.

There is no agreement in place or plans to move forward with the project at this time.

Texas’ focus is on efforts with the covid pandemic. In June 2020, the state of Florida issued an Experimental Use Permit after seven state agencies unanimously approved the project. But it has taken over a decade to obtain that approval. In 2009 and 2010, local outbreaks of dengue fever, which is spread by the Aedes aegypti, left the FKMCD desperate for new options.

Despite an avalanche of effort, local control efforts to contain the Aedes aegypti with larvicide and pesticide had been largely ineffective. And costly, too. Even though Aedes aegypti is only 1% of its mosquito population, FKMCD typically budgets more than $1 million a year, a full tenth of its total funding, to fighting it. In 2012, Florida Keys reached out to Oxitec for help.

Oxitec had developed a male mosquito named OX513A, programmed to die before adulthood unless it was grown in water that contained the antibiotic tetracycline. Batches of the sterile OX513A would be allowed to live and mate with females, however, their male and female offspring would inherit the “kill” programming and die, thus limiting population growth. OX513A had been field tested in the Cayman Islands, Panama, and Brazil, with Oxitec reporting a large success rate with each release.

A trial in an urban area of Brazil reduced the Aedes aegypti by 95%.

But when word spread in the Florida Keys that the GMO mosquito was on the way, public backlash was swift. More than 100,000 people signed a petition against the proposal. That number has grown to more than 242,000. Public relations campaigns reminding Floridians that the GMO pest does not bite because he is male did not completely solve the problem. Media reports quoted angry residents refusing to be treated as “guinea pigs” for the “superbug” or “Robo-Frankenstein” pest.

The EPA spent years investigating the GMO pest’s impact on both human health and the environment, allowing time for public input. But in the midst of the evaluation, Oxitec developed a second-generation “Friendly Mosquito” technology and withdrew the application for the first. The new male mosquito, OX5034, is programmed to kill only the females, with males surviving for multiple generations and passing along the modified genes to subsequent male offspring.

The EPA permit requires Oxitec to notify state officials 72 hours before releasing the GMO mosquitoes and conduct ongoing tests for at least 10 weeks to ensure none of the female pests reach adulthood. However, environmental groups worry that the spread of the genetically modified male genes into the wild population could potentially harm threatened and endangered species of birds, insects, and mammals that feed on the GMO pests. The release of GMO pests will needlessly put Floridians, the environment, and endangered species at risk in the midst of a pandemic.