Despite pro-police message, DeSantis vetoed millions in funding for law enforcement

Ron DeSantis is touting his law-and-order bona fides as he runs for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. But his record as governor of Florida does not match his rhetoric.

DeSantis, who kicked off his campaign on May 24, warns on his website, “Our cities are being hollowed out by spiking crime — the result of weak, ideologically-driven policies.” Borrowing a phrase from President Warren Harding’s 1920 campaign, he promises to “return normalcy to our communities.” 

“The public deserves safe communities and law and order must be maintained. We cannot permit the inmates to run the asylum,” DeSantis says, “and we must reject attacks on the men and women of law enforcement.”

On his campaign website and on social media, DeSantis claims to support law enforcement. 

After signing a bill in April 2021 aimed at combating public disorder, he tweeted, “HB 1 protects Floridians against attempts by local govts to defund law enforcement, provides the means to hold local govt. accountable for failing to protect people & property from rioting, & enacts strong penalties against those engaged in rioting, looting & violent assemblies.”

The following month, he tweeted out a photo of himself presenting an oversized novelty fake check made out to “Florida’s First Responders” to police officers, next to a podium adorned with a sign opposing defunding of the police. “Some want to defund the police,” he wrote. “In Florida, we’re funding them & then some by providing all of our heroes $1,000 bonuses. This represents more than 174,000 first responders across the state!”

That November, DeSantis tweeted, “While other states defund their police, in Florida, we will always support our law enforcement.”

A DeSantis spokesperson did not immediately respond to an American Independent Foundation inquiry for this story.

But after he became governor in 2019 with full Republican control of the state Legislature, the state budget for public safety and corrections actually decreased, when adjusted for inflation. 

In the budget year 2019-2020, the state of Florida spent $4.86 billion on those programs; in 2022-2023, the amount of funding is $5.39 billion. To keep pace with inflation between 2019 and 2022, it would have needed to spend $5.56 billion on corrections and public safety.

After the Legislature approved its spending legislation, DeSantis used his power to veto $12 million in grants for local law enforcement. 

The vetoed line items included $4.8 million for the Pinellas County sheriff’s driver pursuit training facility, $3.5 million for a new police stationfor South Miami, and $750,000 for the Broward County sheriff’s office to reduce its crime backlog and expand its real-time crime center.

Still, according to Florida Politics, DeSantis told the Florida Sheriffs Association in July 2022, “As long as I’m Governor, we’ll be standing with the folks who wear the uniform, we understand that public safety is paramount, and we truly believe that the folks who are working for our sheriff’s departments and our police departments really are serving in a noble profession.”

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.