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MONDAY, MAY 18, 2026

VOLUME 120 - ISSUE 32 Not officially associated with the University of Florida

Published by Campus Communications, Inc. of Gainesville, Florida

Newberry residents report constant noise, dust from nearby cement plant NEIGHBORS SAID FREQUENT BLASTS DAMAGE HOMES AND DISRUPT DAILY LIFE

By Lily Hartzema & Juliana DeFilippo Alligator Staff Writers

When Jeff White moved to Newberry 16 years ago, he and his wife planned to stay for the rest of their lives. They used to joke that the sound from the nearby cement plant was the beach making “a little breezy noise,” despite living two hours from the nearest ocean. But the noise has gotten harder for the 57-year-old retiree to ignore. Dusty air and a lack of communication from Quikrete, the company that now owns the plant, has heightened White’s frustration Despite complaints about the noise and dust resulting from the blasts — controlled explosions done in quarries to extract materials to mix into concrete — Newberry residents report very little change from Quikrete. But the plant’s byproducts

are more than just an annoyance. Exposure to cement dust could be harming residents and their crops. The cement plant, located at 4000 NW County Road, was originally opened by Florida Rock Industries around 25 years ago. Quikrete recently took over the plant from the previous owner, Argos USA. When blasts take place at the plant, White said, his house shakes. A tan, hard-to-remove dust covers the area. Sometimes, the blasts shake White’s home so much the pictures hanging on his walls start to slide out of their frames, he said. The constant sound of machinery “messes with your mind,” he added. On Easter morning, White said he woke up to the beeps of reversing vehicles outside his home. “I said, ‘Give me your address, and I'm going to come sit in front of your house on Sunday morning, pull out a piece of equipment, just let it sit out there and run in the yard with the back-up beeper on

SEE QUIKRETE, PAGE 4

Riana Morales // Alligator Staff

Megan Stone, Haley Nix, Steve Nix and Jake Stone chat at a fence while waiting for the Morgan Wallen Concert at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium in Gainesville, Fla., Saturday, May 16, 2026. Find this story in The Avenue on pg. 5.

Inside GPD's use of facial recognition technology QUESTIONS GROW OVER DISCLOSURE PRACTICES, ACCURACY AND RACIAL BIAS IN ALGORITHMIC IDENTIFICATION

By Julianna Bendeck Alligator Staff Writer

A Gainesville detective said he has entered photographs into facial recognition software more than 30,000 times. The technology works by comparing a submitted image against large databases of

SPORTS/SPECIAL/CUTOUT Study abroad

Story description finish with comma, Host cities and students share pg# insight into tourist relationships. Read more on pg. 2.

publicly available photographs, including mugshots, driver’s license photos and images scraped from the internet. The software then returns a ranked list of possible matches based on facial similarity. Of his more than 30,000 searches, Detective Sgt. Nick Ferrera, a nearly 30-year veteran of the Gainesville Police Department, estimates roughly a quarter generated investigative leads: potential matches used to guide investigations. Those leads, Ferrera said, are only the beginning of an investigation. Detectives never treat facial recognition results as definitive identifications, he said, but instead weigh

them alongside other evidence. “The general public thinks that, as soon as we find a match, boom, we put a warrant out on somebody,” he said. “[That’s] not the case.” To confirm investigative leads, Ferrera said police will further look into the identified person. They gather information, such as where the person lives and whether they’ve had past run-ins with law enforcement, to convince a jury it's the same person. Across Florida, police agencies are increasingly relying on facial recognition technology as part of a broader shift toward

The Avenue: Art

The Repurpose Project to open fourth location, pg. 6

Opinions

High school student encourages youth civic engagement, pg. 8

data-driven policing, which has expanded over the past decade. Within GPD, investigators use two systems — Faces Analysis Comparison & Examination System NXT and Clearview AI — to compare images against databases of publicly available images. Faces Analysis Comparison & Examination System NXT, also called FACESNXT, is a statedistributed program. FACESNXT’s database is composed of driver’s license photos and mugshots. Clearview AI, a private company, has a database of more than 300 million images. In addition to ID photos and mugshots, the

SEE FACIAL RECOGNITION, PAGE 3

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