State: Police unions jump on McBride

The Florida Police Benevolent Association renewed its support of the governor at media events with Lt. Gov. Frank Brogan in Tampa, Miami and Tallahassee. Much of the talk was about McBride, with the Bush campaign sharpening its criticism of his single-minded focus on schools.

"We have an unproven gentleman who only talks about education," said John Rivera, Miami-Dade PBA president and treasurer of the state association. "The most important thing, first, is public safety. The kids, our communities, our visitors must be safe first, before quality education can come into play. Gov. Bush has proven that."

Florida long had one of the nation's highest violent crime rates, but crime has fallen dramatically as a concern among voters in 2002 opinion surveys.

Bush takes credit for what he calls Florida's lowest crime rate since 1972 and cites laws to keep inmates behind bars longer, tougher sentences for gun-related crimes and more emphasis on drug treatment.

Democrats dispute Bush's math. They say he uses the crime rate, or crimes per 100,000 people, which is decreasing, rather than the number of criminal incidents, which is increasing.

Statewide, the rate of crime, including violent crime, dropped by 0.4 percent from 2000 to 2001, the 10th straight annual decline, according to figures released in April by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. The number of crimes rose by 1.8 percent, FDLE said.

Florida reported 911,292 crimes in 2001, including 867 murders, a decrease of 2.6 percent. Almost a quarter of the murders were tied to domestic violence, a 15 percent increase in that category. Violent crimes committed with firearms rose by 5.6 percent in 2001 over the previous year.

McBride's campaign Web site makes no mention of crime or public safety and McBride had very little to say on the subject in his first TV debate with Bush last Friday. When a voter asked the candidates how they would cut crime, McBride turned the subject back to education.

"The way you do that is again, pivoting back to, I think, the most important crucial issue in this state, and that is whether we're going to invest in our kids, and whether we're going to invest enough in them to keep them in an education environment where they can prosper," McBride said.

The PBA and Bush have been allies since Bush's first campaign in 1994. Their relationship blossomed when Bush boosted pension benefits for PBA members in his first year in office and gave them higher pay raises than rank-and-file state employees.

Bush has laid off more than 2,000 state employees and privatized various state functions in his four years, but the PBA, which represents corrections officers in Florida prisons, says he kept a promise not to shift their jobs to private companies.

McBride spokesman Alan Stonecipher said some PBA members are unhappy with conditions in prisons, including privatization of food service and staff cutbacks that endanger officers' safety.

"The PBA leadership should focus on some of those issues and get off the governor's bandwagon long enough to service their own membership," said Stonecipher.

"He says he's going to give all the money to education," PBA president David Murrell said. "What does that mean? No raises for our officers? Closing prisons? He's a Johnny One Note."

-- Times researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

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