Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis invited police officers who are leaving the force in other states to come and work in his state, where law enforcement is respected, he said.
“If you have a chance to do law enforcement in Florida versus some of these other jurisdictions, you’re much better off in Florida because we’ll actually stand by law enforcement,” the Republican governor said during a speech this week, according to Florida Politics.
He blasted the radical “Defund the Police”movement and the hostility of many leftist city officials towards law enforcement as factors fueling the mass exoduses from local police departments.
DeSantis also blamed “weak” leftist policies for the recent spike in crime across the country.
“Make no mistake: the reason that you have such huge spikes in crime in many parts of the country is because of not standing up for law enforcement, having weak policies where you’re letting people out, and you’re not prosecuting people who are committing habitual offenses,” he said. “That is clearly causing disastrous consequences.”
Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno confirmed to WBBH-TV that he has received multiple inquiries about potential openings from officers across the country.
“Other officers in New York and different places ask if we have any openings,” Marceno said. “They want to transfer down. No one wants to work where they’re not supported.”
Corp. Phil Mullen of the Cape Coral Police Department agreed with Marceno: “We have a waiting list of people we’re vetting and our hiring is constant. We’re always looking for job applications.”
DeSantis recently signed a bill to further support law enforcement and make it difficult for local cities to defund their police departments, and easier for police to arrest violent rioters.
He noted he wants the state to do even more to help police officers, and suggested higher pay might be one way to do that.
“We’re happy to be supportive of law enforcement,” DeSantis said.
“We should look at what do we need to do,” he continued. “I know we’ve done some stuff with the [Department of] Corrections to try to make that more of a valuable enterprise. The pay is not great. We’ve done some stuff to try to increase that.”
