Each Florida county will now have a "safe exchange location" for children whose parents share child custody
Photos courtesy of LCSO.
Levy County Sheriff's Office
Florida House Bill 385, Safe Exchange of Minor Children, named the Cassie Carli Law, went into effect on July 1, 2024. This law requires each of Florida's sheriffs to designate at least one parking lot at the sheriff’s office or a substation as an available safe exchange location where parents may bring their minor child for the purpose of exchanging the child to comply with court ordered time sharing.
The parking lot must be well lit, accessible at all times, identified with a purple light or sign identifying the area as a “neutral safe exchange location,” and have video surveillance. Each sheriff is required to provide at least one exchange site per county.
Levy County Sheriff Bobby McCallum has designated the safe exchange location for Levy County as the front parking lot at the Levy County Sheriff's Office main operations building, located at 9150 NE 80th Avenue in Bronson, Florida. This location is clearly marked with two signs and will have a purple light visible from County Road 337 to aid parents in identifying the location. The location has a surveillance camera with recordings maintained for at least 45 days. The bill does not require the sheriff to actively monitor the location, and sheriff's office personnel are not civilly liable for any incident that might occur as the result of the exchange of a child at a safe exchange location.
The bill was named the Cassie Carli Law, in memory of Cassie Carli, a 37 year-old woman from Navarre, Florida who was last seen by her father in March 2022 prior to meeting Marcus Spanevelo, now 36, her ex-boyfriend and father of her 4-year-old daughter, for a child exchange at a location near her home, Juana's bar in Navarre. The exchange had originally been planned for the Walmart store in Destin, Florida, but Carli agreed to a change in plans. Carli and her child's father were involved in a custody battle. Carli was reported missing the following day. Her daughter was located with her father in Birmingham, Alabama, safe and unharmed. Carli's car and purse were soon found near the bar in Florida. Her body was found, six weeks later, in a shallow grave in an Springville, Alabama barn, a short distance from Birmingham. A federal grand jury in Birmingham indicted Spanevelo on a charge of kidnapping that resulted in death.