Scott Powers
Gov. Ron DeSantis is asking the state’s top law enforcement official to make threat assessment strategies a top policing priority to try to detect and stop potential perpetrators of mass violence before they act.
Declaring Florida’s rash of mass shooting tragedies all avoidable, DeSantis sent a letter to Florida Department of Law Enforcement Commissioner Rick Swearingen Wednesday calling for him to develop a “unified statewide strategy for for identifying and managing threats of targeted violence.” This would include development of training programs, coordination with local law enforcement agencies, and assisting them to develop and set up comprehensive threat analysis strategies.
DeSantis said he wants Florida to become a national leader in “intelligence-led policing” to “identify persons who are on the pathway toward violence and to prevent tragedies from occurring.”
“Florida has experienced many senseless acts of mass violence over the last few years and it must end now,” DeSantis stated in a news release. “The acts at Pulse Nightclub, the Fort Lauderdale Airport, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the Jacksonville Landing, the yoga studio in Tallahassee and just a few weeks ago, the SunTrust Bank in Sebring have all been avoidable tragedies. We live in a new era of policing as authorities now have analytical tools they can follow that will impede further violence.”
The letter goes out on the first anniversary of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas that left 17 dead on Feb. 14, 2018, and the day that Orlando’s State Attorney Aramis Ayala announced that Orlando and Orange County law enforcement correctly used deadly force to end the June 12, 2016, massacre at Pulse, which left 49 dead, and taht she has closed a review of the case.
