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Emergency workers to get chemical protection suits

TAMPA - Florida's emergency workers are set to receive expensive suits designed to protect them from terrorist attacks involving toxic chemicals.

A $9.4-million federal Homeland Security grant will pay for 30,000 personal protection kits for the state's first responders, who will get them by May 15, said Chuck Hagan, a project administrator for the state Division of Emergency Management.

Each kit will contain two chemical-resistant suits, a respirator and gloves and boots to protect patrol officers and deputies, he said. Each kit costs $308 and has a shelf life of about five years, Hagan said. The equipment offers a lower level of protection than what bomb squad, tactical and hazardous-materials units wear, but it will protect officers around the perimeter of an event so they can offer aid and evacuate people, officials said.

Field tests guaranteed that the officers could drive cars, direct traffic and fire weapons while wearing the equipment, Hagan said.

JACKSONVILLE - The beating death of a toddler was one of many cases in which child welfare workers ignored prior reports of abuse, a newspaper reports. Family services counselors in the state Department of Children & Families' Jacksonville office left unfinished background checks and follow-ups while their supervisor looked the other way, according to documents obtained by the Florida Times-Union. An audit of 70 cases handled by the same office was prompted by the death of 2-year-old Shawn Sumner, murdered by his mother's boyfriend in May 2001.

Shawn was beaten to death by Travis Yoder, now serving 25 years in prison for second-degree murder. The toddler's grandmother said she called the state abuse hot line more than 20 times to report problems in the home Shawn's mother shared with Yoder.

FORT LAUDERDALE - The medical director of a shuttered clinic surrendered his medical license during a state Medicaid fraud investigation.

Dr. Edgar Escobar of Pompano Beach ended his medical career Friday as one of Florida's top prescribers of narcotics and other painkillers to low-income patients.

Escobar wrote that he has been too ill to treat patients or write prescriptions since at least January 2003, even though the clinic issued prescriptions under his name and Medicaid billing number as recently as this month. Medicaid paid more than $3.6-million for those prescriptions.

Medicaid fraud investigators claim Escobar's unlicensed former business associate, Fausto Capella, wrote some of the prescriptions and illegally treated patients at the Fort Lauderdale clinic called South Florida Immunologic Center Inc.

Agents arrested Cappella, 40, of Fort Lauderdale, on charges of practicing medicine without a license, Medicaid fraud, grand theft and trafficking in prescription narcotics, including OxyContin.

PENSACOLA - Casey Rodgers has been sworn in as the nation's youngest federal district judge.

"With a name like Casey, some people just assume it's a man's name," said Rodgers, 39. "I can tell some people are surprised to see that I'm a woman and that I'm as young as I am but, once court comes to order and we begin, I think it becomes irrelevant."