Rick Scott praises Tampa Bay officers on Senate floor

Sen. Rick Scott praised Tampa Bay law enforcement officers in a speech he delivered Wednesday on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

He spoke in support of a resolution he introduced supporting law enforcement that did not make it to the floor for a vote.

Scott praised officers such as Lakeland Police Department Sgt. Adrian Rodrigez and Officer James Henry, who he said created a community program that not only reads to school children, according to Scott, but also participates in high-stakes SWAT missions.

Scott also honored Tampa International Airport police Officer Jimmie Bizzle for training his colleagues in aiding the homeless and helping them get the help and services they need. And he mentioned Tampa Police Department Cpl. Margo Ferguson for holding sex offenders accountable and helping give food to the needy during the pandemic.

Scott finished by talking about Detective Michelle Mahoney of the Clearwater Police Department, saying she is known for her “empathy, understanding and compassion for her community.”

The senator also bashed those pushing to defund the police, calling it “un-American” and “the most dangerous policy idea of (his) lifetime.”

The resolution mentions law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty this year — including two Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies wounded in a recent ambush — and attempts to tie those incidents to this year’s protests against police brutality and systemic racism, calling them “organized protest movements bent on sowing civil unrest.”

According to a report released this month by the nonprofit Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, 93 percent of protests for racial justice this year have been peaceful.

Scott did not mention Black Lives Matter, the movement that has led many protests across the country and in Tampa Bay since the May 25 death of George Floyd, a Black man who was killed by a Minneapolis police officer while in custody.