Ron DeSantis: Cities Like NYC 'Have Let Inmates Run The Asylum' On Crime

Forbes Breaking News

At the Florida Sheriffs' Association Summer Conference on Tuesday, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) slammed blue city crime policies.

Transcript

00:00What are our country's best sheriffs doing? Of all 50 states, we're number one.

00:05We appreciate what you guys are doing, and I think you're going to end up at this conference next year

00:12potentially be talking about, hey, they elected some anti-law enforcement mayor in New York City,

00:19and now all these NYPD cops want to come work in our agencies and get the $5,000 bonus,

00:24and I think that that's unfortunately something, from New York's perspective,

00:28that may happen if they do this, and it's kind of frustrating to see it

00:32because we know what works and what doesn't work.

00:37Some of this stuff has been tried where you're anti-law enforcement, releasing criminals,

00:43not pursuing prosecutions, and then we see states like Florida that have done it the opposite

00:48and have had really strong positive results.

00:51So we've been able to do a lot of stuff holistically.

00:55I always talk about we're ranked number one in economy three years in a row by CNBC of all 50 states.

01:02We've led the nation in net migration for at least the last three or four years.

01:08We're number one in education freedom, number one in higher education, number one in business formations,

01:14number one in talent development, entrepreneurship, all these things,

01:17and there's a lot of great things to talk about, but I will tell you none of that stuff would be sustainable

01:24if you don't have law and order prevail in your communities and in your state,

01:29and we've seen that across the country.

01:32Yes, they've had a lot of problems in other areas too in some of these places,

01:35but the number one reason why people fly the coop from some of these places

01:40is because law and order is broken down.

01:43They don't feel safe in their communities.

01:45The politicians, for whatever reason, have let inmates run the asylum.

01:50What we've done in Florida is we've done strong policy,

01:54and we've done strong support for the people that are out there getting the job done.

01:59At the end of the day, you can have the right policy if you don't have folks in our sheriff's departments

02:05and in our police departments that are out there doing God's work, then you're not going to be successful.

02:11But you can have great sheriffs, great police departments if you have really bad policy

02:17that's empowering criminals and harming public safety, then you're fighting a really serious uphill battle.

02:25So if you look at what we've done throughout my tenure as governor,

02:28well, one thing we've done is we've rejected jailbreak-style policies

02:33that have prevailed in places like New York and California.

02:37And let's just be clear, those have been proposed in the state of Florida.

02:41And people think, oh, we're so law and order.

02:44There's a lot of folks that wanted to do that.

02:46You have people that want to release felons from prisons now,

02:52saying they don't even have to serve their sentence like Florida law requires.

02:57You also have folks that want to go easy on people

03:01that are committing street-level crimes, and we know that that would just cause

03:06more crime and a proliferation of a lot of bad things.

03:09There's movements to abolish cash bail.

03:13You even had a movement down in Miami-Dade where a judge wanted to do that.

03:17So this stuff has all been percolating around the country.

03:22They run into a roadblock with me as governor because I'm not going to support it,

03:26and we're going to make sure that we're law and order.

03:29But just think, if those policies were to take hold in Florida,

03:33how much more difficult would your jobs be as sheriffs to be able to do it?

03:38I just think to myself, like in New York City, you have these cops,

03:43and they're risking their lives out there.

03:46You never know what's going to happen.

03:48And that's just against the backdrop.

03:49They know if there's any type of altercation,

03:52the politicians and the media will likely blame them,

03:54even if they didn't do anything wrong.

03:56So you kind of have that.

03:57So you're doing all this.

03:58You apprehend a criminal suspect.

04:01They end up getting charged and a judge just lets them go,

04:05even for very serious crimes.

04:07So then like two, three weeks later, you get called out

04:10and you got to apprehend the same guy for committing additional crimes.

04:14And it's like, at some point, you know,

04:17whose side are you on with some of this stuff?

04:20So our policies have been strong.

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