Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis slammed “woke” politics and “failed” bail reform in a Presidents Day trip to New York.
The Republican governor, who is a possible presidential contender in 2024, attended an event focused on law enforcement and crime prevention on Staten Island, where he was a special guest. DeSantis used his speech to cast the state’s criminal justice system as dysfunctional and dominated by ineffectual politics.
“I read that New York is the only state that doesn’t allow judges to consider when they’re making a bail determination whether someone’s a danger to the community — that’s like one of the most important things that you need to be considering when you’re making these bail determinations,” DeSantis said, according to the New York Daily News.
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DeSantis accused New York Democrats of trying to “out-woke” one another, something he said has led to issues with the Empire State’s bail laws.
“You apprehend a criminal, bring him in, and then they just release ‘em, so you got to risk your life again two weeks later to apprehend the same guy all over again,” DeSantis said, addressing police officers. “How does that make any sense? Is that making your community any safer by doing that? So, you need to do things like repeal these failed pieces of legislation.”
The remarks are in line with New York Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat who has taken a strong law-and-order stand and has pushed back on some in his own party on issues of crime and justice. He has urged state lawmakers to revisit 2020 reforms to bail laws.
One such reform, which DeSantis seems to have been referencing, was the removal of the “dangerousness standard” under which judges set bail for nonviolent offenses. Critics of the standard contend that it disproportionately affects black and Hispanic offenders.
“There’s a hemorrhaging of our Latino community, our AAPI communities, that’s leaving the traditional Democratic base, because we’ve allowed the loudest and those who consider themselves to be ‘woke’ [to take charge],” Adams recently said.
Still, while DeSantis and Adams are cut from the same cloth on the issue of crime, there is a gulf between them when it comes to other political issues. Adams took a swing at DeSantis over his administration’s actions as he arrived in the state.
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“Welcome to NYC, [DeSantis], a place where we don’t ban books, discriminate against our LGBTQ+ neighbors, use asylum seekers as props, or let the government stand between a woman and health care,” Adams said on Twitter.
“We’re happy to teach you something about values while you’re here,” he added.
