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DeSantis pitches gritty law-and-order policies to audience beyond Florida

We won’t accuse Christine Jordan Sexton of burying the lede. Pundits in glass houses, and all that. Nonetheless, we contend, in Thursday’s detailed report of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ bare-knuckled rollout of public safety policies, the Florida Politics reporter’s kicker was, in the long run, everything.

“Certainly I have the best Attorney General job in the nation,” [Florida AG Ashley] Moody said, praising the Governor for being at the forefront of public safety issues.

“He doesn’t just sit back and wait to see if it gets fixed. He doesn’t just sit back and wait to see what happens to us in Florida. He goes there, he is proactive,” Moody said. “He starts talking to people about, how do we fix it? I really wish this country was run the same way.” (Emphasis added … but who wouldn’t?)

The rollout of DeSantis’ primary-hued law-and-order proposals plainly was not designed to catch, solely, the attention of Sunshine State officials, lawmakers, and voters. Does this sound like a governor who’s content to run the affairs of America’s third-largest state? Under policies DeSantis laid out during a press conference in Miami Thursday, Florida would:

  • Require only a super-majority, not unanimity, for juries to reach death-penalty verdicts.
  • Make execution chambers available to human traffickers and sexual predators.
  • Jail-for-life peddlers of fentanyl disguised as candy to youngsters.
  • Banish cashless bail.
  • Prevent local elected officials from defunding law enforcement.

DeSantis also took a moment to poke Andrew Warren, the former Hillsborough County state attorney suspended by the governor last August, and any other reform-minded top prosecutors: He won’t have state attorneys who “pick and choose which law that they will enforce. … If you disagree with a law, run for the Legislature and change it, but you don’t get to be a law unto yourself.”

Speaking of the reform-minded (or “rogue”-minded, in DeSantis’ view), within hours of the governor’s declarations, Miami-Dade Chief Judge Nushin Sayfie shelved a bail-reform plan, set for activation later this year, that would have allowed judges to release low-risk offenders without requiring cash bonds.

In light of DeSantis’ remarks and the likelihood of action by the Legislature, Sayfie said in a statement, “[I]t is prudent to hold off on implementation pending further guidance from our state lawmakers.”

If this latest policy bombshell, the grittiness of which hasn’t been seen since Ronald Reagan claimed a national microphone, isn’t directed at an audience beyond Florida, then the Sunshine State doesn’t export oranges and strawberries. Hear Ron DeSantis roar:

“We are very proud that we are a law-and-order state. We’ve seen a lot of jurisdictions around this country indulge in what I would say are faddish thinking: attacking law enforcement, thinking that you can solve some of these problems through things like social services instead of police on the street when you have dangerous people,” the Republican Governor said.

“So there’s been some experiments done and I think it’s been really disastrous in far too many parts of the country. … But what have we done in the state of Florida? You never saw us defund police in the state of Florida. Not on my watch,” DeSantis added, to a rousing round of applause.

Stipulated: Without results, that’s just a bunch of red-meat rhetoric designed to set the base a-drooling. But look what’s happening in Florida just now, according to state officials:

This law and order legislation will be in addition to Governor DeSantis’ previous pro-public safety initiatives, including hallmark anti-rioting legislation, the strongest law enforcement recruitment and support initiative in the nation, and a crackdown on opioid dealers and drug traffickers. Because of these policies, Floridians are enjoying a 50-year record low crime rate, and year-over-year crime in Florida is down nearly ten percent, with murder down 14 percent, burglary down 15 percent, and robbery down 17 percent.

Our tender-hearted friends on the left may regard DeSantis’ policies — past and proposed — with the pearls-clutching alarm reserved for the easily panicked. But Floridians, who are nothing if not a one-peninsula paella of all that is America, overwhelmingly approve. Safety is a good thing. Punishing bad actors is a good thing. The state’s top cop gets that, approves the same, and now is openly rooting for a coast-to-coast embrace of fix-it-now law-and-order Ron DeSantis-style.

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Jazz Shaw 7:20 PM | March 18, 2024
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