Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is expected to meet with law enforcement figures in crime-ridden blue areas — including Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia — touting his approach to crime and support of law enforcement in the Sunshine State, as speculation of a 2024 presidential bid continues to dominate the narrative.
DeSantis has long capitalized on his administration’s support for law enforcement, particularly in the wake of protests, riots, and rising crime over the past few years in blue jurisdictions. While calls to “defund police” dominated the narrative, DeSantis made it clear that Florida would do no such thing, going in the opposite direction by announcing initiatives to recruit police officers to Florida with incentives including signing bonuses, out-of-state relocation support, and an academy scholarship program.
DeSantis outlined those specific plans in 2021 during the National Fraternal Order of Police-hosted 2021 Biennial National Conference & Expo, and he has continued to tout the bonuses as a major political victory amid calls to defund police.
The DeSantis administration has also taken action to curb violent crime in the form of 2021’s anti-riot bill, as well as last year’s targeting of woke prosecutors, suspending State Attorney Andrew Warren.
Suspended Hillsborough County State Attorney Andrew Warren leaves a news conference, Wednesday, August 17, 2022, in Tallahassee, Florida. (Chris Urso/Tampa Bay Times via AP)
“We are going to make sure that our laws are enforced and that no individual prosecutor puts himself above the law,” DeSantis said at the time, explaining that communities were becoming unsafe “thanks to prosecutors that think they know better than the people’s representatives, and they get to pick and choose which laws that they’re enforcing.”
Notably, in January, a Florida judge upheld DeSantis’s decision to suspend Warren.
Now, DeSantis is taking his advice outside of the Sunshine State, meeting with police officers in Staten Island on Monday, followed by Philadelphia suburb Fort Washington, and Elmhurst, Illinois, this week.
According to Fox 13:
Paul DiGiacomo, president of New York City’s Detectives’ Endowment Association, said he will be attending Monday’s event. He told Fox News Digital that New York’s bail reform law that ended cash bail requirements for many criminal charges has endangered law enforcement.
“It’s a law enforcement rally to send a message back to some of our elected officials that the laws that they have enacted in the state of New York are not working — specifically the bail reform laws — and it’s putting my members, detectives and cops in danger, as well as the public,” he said. “It’s gone too far to the left over the last couple of years.”
DeSantis’s trips to these blue jurisdictions comes months after Florida’s Republican victories in the midterm election, prompting the governor to deem Florida the political “blueprint” moving forward.
“The one place I think that people can look to as a blueprint is Florida, because what have we done? … We led and we were on offense, and we didn’t shy away from big issues. We took on those issues, and we won victory after victory for the people,” he said.
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