'Stain on the agency': DeSantis accused of turning state police into political army

Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis has turned a state police agency into his own army dedicated to enforcing his right-wing political agenda, an in-depth investigation by the Washington Post revealed Friday.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement – a body with a $300 million budget and 2,000 employees – is meant to be tackling major crime including violence and drugs.

Instead, DeSantis has “weaponized” it to crackdown on political issues central to his conservative agenda – including election fraud, immigration and targeting political opponents, the report said.

“We’re enforcing someone’s political agenda — the governor’s,” said former FDLE bureau chief Louis Sloan, who retired earlier than he’d planned, largely because he was sickened by some of the actions the department was being asked to take, the Post reported.

“FDLE is more politically directed and controlled by the governor than in its 50 years of existence,” said Jim Madden, a former assistant commissioner who also retired

“If citizens can’t rely on an independent, nonpolitical statewide police agency, it’s one of the worst things that can happen.”

Among the actions that many thought were politically motivated and outside the remit of the department were:

• Rounding up immigrants.

DeSantis bragged about being the first to respond to a call for help from the governors of Texas and Arizona to deal with immigrants coming over their borders. He sent 50 officers from the FDLE to back up Texas patrols, claiming that the immigrants were headed to Florida. Among the work they did was helping jet dozens of planeloads of people from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard – criticized by many as a political stunt – and organizing buses traveling through the state with unaccompanied migrant children.

• Policing voter fraud claims.

As “election integrity” became a talking point after 2020, DeSantis used the FDLE to show he was taking action, the Post reported. The FDLE pushed back, saying there was insufficient fraud, but they ended up arresting many of questionable charges, the Post reported.

“For me it was a stain on the agency when it got involved in this even though there is no large-scale election fraud," said Sloan.

• Consolidating control.

Florida law was changed last March to make it easier for the governor to choose the FDLE chief by no longer requiring a unanimous vote by cabinet members. And DeSantis did, quickly choosing his own man for the job without asking for support.

“His style is to govern alone,” said then Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, the lone Democrat in the cabinet who called it a “power grab.”

• Using the agency to target political opponents

FDLE officials were asked to produce crime statistics that would help build a case against Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren after he voiced opposition to policing abortion-related crimes, the Post reported. He was later suspended.

“We were stunned to see FDLE play any role in the Governor’s illegal suspension of Mr. Warren,” the prosecutor’s lawyer, Jean-Jacques Cabou, said. “This is not a law enforcement investigation.”

“The politicization of government is concerning,” said Sloan, the former bureau chief.“I loved serving the people of Florida, but it’s been tainted.”