WINTER HAVEN, Fla. – Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed anti-swatting and school safety bills while visiting Winter Haven on Wednesday afternoon.
The anti-swatting bill, HB 279, False Reporting, increases penalties for making false 911 calls.
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“Now the perpetrator is gonna have to pay for who made the call. And restitution must include full payment of any costs incurred by the agencies as well as prosecution and investigation. So when we prosecute you, we’re also gonna bill you for having to go through with that," Desantis said at a press conference before signing the bills.
The increased penalties for making false emergency calls include making it a second-degree felony if the false reporting leads to death and a third-degree felony if the false reporting results in serious injury.
It also requires repeat offenders to face enhanced charges and mandates that victims and law enforcement be compensated.
“Swatting is a tactic of cowards who use fake reports to law enforcement to harass people who they disagree with politically. Today, Florida gets even tougher on swatting,” Gov. DeSantis said.
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DeSantis also signed SB 1470, which expands upon the school guardian program that allows districts to train school employees or bring in specially-trained employees to protect a school if there is an incident.
The new law allows childcare facilities to use guardians and requires those who work as school security guards to be approved by the sheriff.
“If you’re a school that has guardian, that’s gonna be a disincentive for someone who wants to target your school,” DeSantis said. “They go to where there’s soft targets. They go where they not gonna get resistance. So whether it’s having school resource officers, whether it supporting the guardian program, these are ways, yeah, obviously, if it ever came to something really terrible, you wanna have some folks there that are gonna fight for the good guys, but I think the biggest thing is it deters it from happening.”