In Orlando, DeSantis plans more first-responder bonuses
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced plans for another round of $1,000 bonuses for police and other first responders as part of his upcoming budget proposal during a press conference in Orlando on Monday.
Appearing at the Semoran Boulevard headquarters of Florida Highway Patrol Troop D and flanked by uniformed troopers, DeSantis also said his proposed budget would include $73 million in funding to increase the minimum pay for entry-level state law enforcement officers by 20%.
DeSantis said his proposal would also increase salaries for veteran state law enforcement officers by 25%. The governor’s budget will also include $124 million to increase salaries for correctional officers, hiking their base pay to $20 an hour, he said Monday.
“I am proud to propose larger and longer-lasting measures to help our state recruit and retain the best law enforcement officers in the nation and to provide $1,000 bonuses for first responders and law enforcement officers for the second year in a row,” he said.
In addition to police, the bonuses will go to firefighters, paramedics and EMTs, according to the governor’s proposal. In total, his proposals add up to $400 million in new funding for law enforcement and other first responders, according to the governor’s press office.
DeSantis has also pitched $5,000 signing bonuses to recruit new law enforcement officers, as well as incentives to lure working officers to relocate from other states.
In Orlando, DeSantis touted his resistance to calls to “defund the police,” a rallying cry of many activists during nationwide protests against police brutality last summer, which followed the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.
States and cities that shifted funding away from law enforcement agencies were embracing “disastrous policies,” he claimed.
“We never budged an inch here,” DeSantis said. “We stood with law enforcement the entire time.”
Pressure to increase pay for corrections officers has been building in Florida amid a growing crisis in the state’s Department of Corrections, which has been forced to shutter facilities amid the most severe staffing crisis in the agency’s recorded history.
“We need to retain people [and] we need to attract people,” DeSantis said Monday.