Police Searching for Palm Beach Resident Who Told New Yorkers They Should Leave if They’re ‘Woke’
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Palm Beach Police are reportedly searching for a resident who told visitors from New York they should leave if they’re “woke.”
The development comes after disgruntled New Yorkers in the city told police that someone placed fliers on their cars over the weekend. “If you are one of the those ‘woke’ people — leave Florida,” the fliers purportedly said. “You will be happier elsewhere, as will we.”
“This behavior is another sign that our democracy is in peril,” one resident who moved from New York told The Palm Beach Post.
In contrast to Florida, which does not have a state income tax, New York City residents enjoy the nation’s top tax rate — in excess of 50 percent — along with some of the strictest Covid-19 mandates, and have been migrating to Florida en masse since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. The state lost a total of 33,565 residents to Florida between September 2020 and March 2021, according to the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.
The most popular counties for New York emigrants included Palm Beach, which picked up 14,045 residents, along with Broward (8,422) and Miami-Dade (8,033). The new arrivals included former President Donald Trump, who changed his residence from New York to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach in 2019.
Some New Yorkers have similarly taken advantage of the state’s less stringent Covid-19 mandates, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who was spotted carousing last week without a mask at a sushi restaurant in Miami Beach.
Palm Beach Police Captain Will Rothrock told The Post he was searching for a law that could be used to charge the purveyor of the unwelcoming message. “We understand that the lack of civility and respect for personal property displayed by this is concerning,” Rothrock said.
