DeSantis Confronted By Reporter on 5-Year Anniversary of Parkland Shooting: How Are Florida’s Schools Safer?
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL) was asked by a reporter on Tuesday about school safety in Florida and the U.S. in general, the day after a mass shooting at Michigan State University and on the 5-year anniversary of the horrific Parkland school shooting in Florida.
“It’s been five years since the Parkland shooting today. Last night, we had a campus shooting in Michigan. Do you feel we’ve done enough as a state and a country to protect campuses and schools?” DeSantis was asked while taking questions on Tuesday.
“So five years ago was one of the worst days that this state’s ever had. And I was not governor yet at the time, but it was something that I think not only reverberated in every corner of our state, but really across the country,” DeSantis replied, adding:
When I became governor, I got to know many of the families. And these are really, really difficult losses. It was an abominable act. I can tell you that if you look, since I’ve been governor, what what we’ve done, we’ve done over $1,000,000,000 to bolster school security. We’ve worked hard to bring accountability to folks who maybe could have done something to prevent this guy from being in this position, whether it was removing the sheriff of the county or there was having this school security grand jury, which has led to the removal of some of the school board members.
You’ve seen the superintendent replaced. And so I took it very seriously to say, you know, if there’s never accountability, then these things are more likely to happen again. And the thing is, there are things that happen in life that that you can’t always foresee or prevent.
Sometimes people you wouldn’t expect can do some horrible things. But this was an individual as soon as this had happened, everybody knew in that community who had done it without even getting any firsthand information.
“It’s almost like he was just a ticking time bomb. So I think we put a lot of effort into that,” DeSantis concluded without going into details. Florida enacted a red flag law in March of 2018, following the Parkland shooting, which DeSantis opposed while running for governor at the time.
“And then we are going to with the speaker and the Senate president, we’re going to reform the capital sentencing procedure in Florida,” he continued, referencing anger over one juror standing in the way of the death penalty for the Parkland shooter.
“Of course, to get convicted of a crime, you need a unanimous jury. But Nicholas Cruz was somebody everyone knew was guilty and he’s entitled to process,” DeSantis added, concluding:
But this was not anything that he admitted it. Right. So then they go for the penalty phase and you kill 17 people. How, what other penalty can you get other than the ultimate penalty? And yet you have one holdout that can nullify that. That was not the law in Florida for most of the time.
Watch the full clip above
