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Ron DeSantis Wants You to Be Scared Senseless About Crime (Don’t Be)

and Daily Dot have since found that dozens of officers who moved to the state under the program have lengthy disciplinary histories, have accumulated multiple citizen complaints ranging from excessive force to racism to sexual misconduct, and have cost their former cities hundreds of thousands of dollars in lawsuits.

One former NYPD officer who accepted DeSantis’ offer had been charged with reckless endangerment after driving his car into a crowd of protesters in the summer of 2020. Another officer lured by the governor’s $6,700 signing bonus has since been charged with domestic abuse after a woman accused him of beating then grabbing her by the hair and choking her when she tried to escape. Still another was arrested and charged with murder after shooting and killing her husband.

This shouldn’t surprise anyone. The entire premise of DeSantis’ scheme was to appeal to officers who felt they’d been unfairly disciplined, who wanted to work for departments with less oversight, have fewer rules, and give them more freedom—and felt so strongly about it that they were willing to move to another state.

There’s compelling research suggesting that crime tends to increase as people lose trust in political and criminal justice institutions. The more people believe state power is being manipulated for political ends and that the system is rigged against them, the less likely they are to cooperate with police and trust the courts to fairly mete out justice.

It’s hard to conceive of more brazen attacks on the rule of law than a governor ordering sham arrests for cable news headlines, abusing desperate migrants seeking asylum to “own the libs,” or willfully importing cops with a history of abusing the people they serve.

There is at least one important difference between Trump and DeSantis. While Trump was enormously successful at tapping grievance politics to build a sizable cult of personality, fortunately for all of us he lacked the competence and discipline to implement his more authoritarian impulses.

DeSantis has the opposite problem. He’s shown aptitude at centralizing his power and getting lawmakers to implement some of the most repressive policies in the country, but thus far has been awkward and clumsy on the national campaign trail.

The more voters get to know him, the less they seem to like him. If he manages to find some charisma, he could be a considerable force—and an enormously destructive one.

But there’s little reason to think he’ll make the country any safer.

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