Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has a warning message for rioters: stay away from the Sunshine State.
In a press conference last week, DeSantis vocalized his unwavering support for law enforcement and spoke about the lack of respect police are given.
“Hey, if you’re in Portland, you think you can come down to Florida and do this?” he said. “Stay out of our state, we don’t want you coming down here causing problems.”
“And if anyone does cause these problems, if you try to burn something down, if you try to harm anybody - but particularly a police officer - during one of these violent assemblies, there will be consequences,” he said. “They will be swift, they will be severe and they will be such that people that see that happen will know that that’s not something we want to do going forward.”
DeSantis also addressed the summer of riots that swept the nation, and the lack of control taken by team-left politicians.
“I think if you look around the country, what happens is, like in Portland, these people riot every night, they go get their mugshot and then they get put right back on the street to do it again,” he said.
“That’s what we don’t want. What we want to say is, you know, the difference between going out and doing First Amendment stuff, which obviously we all support, it’s part of being American. The minute you harm somebody else, or you harm somebody’s property, or you do those types of things, the only way we’re going to put a stop to it is to have very swift penalties for it.”
As previously reported by Human Events News, last month, DeSantis doubled down on his support for law enforcement and passed anti-riot legislation to crack down on violent protests and riots.
“HB 1 protects Floridians against attempts by local governments to defund law enforcement, provides the means to hold local government accountable for failing to protect people and property from rioting, and enacts strong penalties against those engaged in rioting, looting and violent assemblies,” DeSantis said in a tweet.
