2025: From the Chairman: A New Year; A New Mission
Happy New Year from all of us at FAST. As we turn the page on 2024, we leave behind four years of ineptitude and decline as a nation. Thanks to Governor DeSantis, who largely shielded Florida from federal incompetence, and the promise of President Trump and a recommitment to American exceptionalism, we feel quite optimistic as the new year dawns.
The Florida Highway Patrol finds itself at a crossroads as we begin 2025.
In 2012, the Florida Legislature provided funding for 1987 sworn positions for the Patrol. Last year, FY 2024-25, the Legislature provided funding for 1982 sworn positions.
To put that number into a hard, realistic perspective, in 2012, the population of the state of Florida was 19.3 million, today that number sits at 22.6 million.
Combine that with troopers deployed to Texas, the Florida Keys, and Jewish schools and synagogues and there are even fewer troopers available to patrol the highways and fulfill their primary mission of enforcing the law and protecting citizens and visitors to the state.
This, of course, is a recipe for tragedy.
Florida needs 1,000 new Florida Highway Patrol troopers over the next ten years.
How the Legislature goes about making this happen is, of course, up to them, but a critically understaffed Highway Patrol endangers not only shorthanded troopers and other officers, but the very citizens and visitors we are sworn to protect.
To that end, we have begun the process of educating our elected officials on the problem.
We have recently begun meeting with senators, including Senator Tom Wright (R-Port Orange) to begin to address the issue and ask for 100 new positions for the next fiscal year.
We will also work to educate other members until we can get some traction and get some results. As always, thank you for your continued support!