LEE COUNTY, Fla. – Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis held a news conference Friday morning in Cape Coral, officiating while six recent hires of the city’s police department accepted $5,000 bonus checks from the Florida Law Enforcement Recruitment Bonus Payment Program.
The governor — departing somewhat from a recent string of roundtables, news conferences and executive action solely focused on Hurricane Ian — framed Friday’s event as both post-storm help for the officers and as the state “fighting back against a lot of people” who DeSantis said think that law enforcement agencies “should be defunded and marginalized.”
Recommended Videos
“Even apart from a spectacular disaster like we’ve just suffered, you want to have safe streets, you want to have safe communities. That used to be something in this country that we universally expected and had in most places. Now you’ve seen that really erode, particularly over the last few years. You have some places in this country that are operated almost like third-world countries with the crime just totally out of control,” DeSantis said. “...So, bottom line is, you have police departments across this country that the people that are out there risking their lives do not have the support of politicians, media, community, and that’s not a good situation.’”
[TRENDING: Win four 3-day park hopper passes to Walt Disney World | Become a News 6 Insider]
DeSantis referenced a proposal he made in September 2021 to entice law enforcement officers to work in Florida with a $5,000 signing bonus. Come April of this year, the governor made it happen, signing HB-3 at the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office and introducing multiple new benefits for Floridian law enforcement.
The law established the $5,000 bonus program, it provided that dependent children of law enforcement officers be eligible for new and existing scholarships, it boosted county sheriffs’ salaries based on the population of their jurisdiction, it exempted veterans from having to undergo basic training as a prerequisite to entering an LEO position and more.
Before handing off the checks, Department of Economic Opportunity Secretary Dane Eagle further related the importance of the bonuses to suggestions of nationwide anti-police rhetoric, as well as to hurricane recovery.
“Without law and order, there’s chaos, and with chaos, there is no economic sustainability. So thanks for the work that they’re doing on blue-sky days, keeping our streets safe, but to the work that they’re doing after the storm, making sure that we can get up and running again. It’s helping the governor and my agency and everybody else get back on their feet and get businesses up and running again, so thank you for the work that you have been putting in,” Eagle said.
One of the recent hires — Cape Coral officer Mercedes Phillips, who said she started at the department in July — thanked DeSantis and spoke about her inclination to make the move from farther north.
“Before getting hired for the Cape Coral Police Department, I worked as an officer for three years in Maryland just slightly south of DC. From my firsthand experience, there’s been a lot of officers that were alienated and underappreciated in this area of the country, I knew moving to Florida I would be valued and appreciated by my department, citizens and coworkers. On top of work-life balance, I desired the ability to progress in my profession as an officer, and Gov. DeSantis offered the $5,000 incentive bonus to move here,” Phillips said.
A journalist asked DeSantis for his outlook on Floridians’ worries over property insurance in the wake of Hurricane Ian.
“I think part of one of the big issues that’s going to arise with respect to some of the insurance is: Was your damage due to wind, or was your damage due to flood and water? And sometimes it’s obvious, like if the winds knock your roof off, that’s wind damage, so that would be something that a homeowners policy would cover. If you’re by some lake and it rises and you have 3 feet of water in your living room, well that’s a flood,” DeSantis said. “...Unfortunately, you’re gonna have some people who were told ‘You don’t live in a floodplain, you don’t need flood insurance,‘ so they bought the homeowners policy, but maybe their damage was not because of the wind, it was because of the water, so then they’re in a situation- they can get money from FEMA, but that is not going to be commensurate with having the flood policy.”
In general, DeSantis and Eagle said recent hires of Floridian law enforcement agencies should see their check in the mail soon, while for bonuses headed to officers in places such as Sanibel Island — where Friday’s speakers said in-transit mail may have realistically been destroyed along with much of the community — it could take a while longer.
The governor on Thursday held news conferences in Charlotte and Lee counties, awarding $2 million from the Florida Disaster Fund to first responder groups and updating restoration efforts at Lee County schools, respectively. At the latter event, DeSantis also expressed his disappointment at a jury’s decision to recommend a life sentence for Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz.
Get today’s headlines in minutes with Your Florida Daily: