A legal loophole exposed by a recent school threat case in Cape Coral has sparked an urgent conversation about public safety and legislative reform. When an individual made a verbal threat that was subsequently recorded and posted online, the Cape Coral Police Department was able to charge the person who shared the video, but not the person who actually made the threatening statements.
In this week's episode of the Cape CopCast 'Chief's Chat,' Chief Anthony Sizemore shifts to co-host with Public Affairs Officer Lisa Greenberg. We sit down with State Representative Mike Giallombardo to unpack this critical issue and explain the path toward closing this significant gap in Florida's threat laws. We dive into how legislation actually works—the methodical, multi-layered process designed to produce thoughtful, effective laws.
State Rep. Giallombardo walks listeners through the complex journey of a bill, from initial conception through committee stops in both chambers of the legislature, highlighting the deliberate "speed bumps" built into the system that prevent emotional reactions from creating problematic laws. The conversation reveals the careful balance legislators must strike: addressing genuine threats that endanger school safety while avoiding overcriminalization, particularly when it comes to young people who may say foolish things without genuine intent to cause harm.
This behind-the-scenes look at government collaboration demonstrates how professional relationships between law enforcement and elected officials can lead to real-world solutions that protect communities. Listen in to gain rare insight into the machinery of government actually working as intended—identifying problems, formulating solutions, and navigating the complex path toward meaningful change.
Learn more about State Rep. Giallombardo here: https://www.flhouse.gov/Sections/Representatives/details.aspx?MemberId=4783&LegislativeTermId=91
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome back to another episode of the Cape
Copcast Chiefs Chat Edition.
You can see I have a differentco-host today.
I have the Chief your elevatedas co-host for us.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
I've been promoted, congratulations.
Yeah, how's it feel?
Speaker 1 (00:16):
It feels good, yeah, so Mercedes is still on
maternity leave.
She's going to be back, don'tworry, but the Chief is going to
be my co-host today because wehave a special guest.
You might have just heard him.
We have State RepresentativeMike Giolombardo with us today
and we wanted to kind of take adeeper dive into the next steps
when it comes to how we addresslegislation and things like that
(00:38):
.
This is all born from aconversation that we had about
the recent school threats.
Chief.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Yeah, this is at the end of that episode we talked
about.
Just to recap, for those whomight not be aware, we had kind
of an oddball case where therewas a school threat where an
individual made the threatverbally.
It was videotaped and uploadedto social media by another
individual and the statutecaptures that activity, the
(01:04):
posting of it, which resulted inthe felony charge of a written
or posted school threat, and theindividual who made the
comments did not meet thecriteria for that charge.
We were able to subsequentlyarrest him on a different charge
, but the question was why?
Why couldn't we arrest him for?
Speaker 3 (01:23):
that.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
And the law is the law.
And at the end of that episodewe said on Next Steps, we're
going to engage the staterepresentative for our community
, which is Mike G Lombardo, thatI have a relationship with.
I talked to him that weekendand said Mike, are you aware of
what happened?
You talk about a guy who's intune locally.
(01:44):
Yes, he is.
He's from Cape Coral, likemyself, a Mariner grad.
He's got kids in school, so itwas very front of mind for him.
And he said absolutely, I sawit.
What can we do?
And that's where thatpartnership had already been
there but for this particularissue really went into action.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Well, it's nice to have these partnerships, because
now you can not to say this ina negative way, but take
advantage of it, right?
This is where we can actuallycreate some action to come from
something like this.
So thank you for coming todayno, absolutely.
It is awesome to have you here.
How are you doing?
Speaker 3 (02:14):
I'm doing well.
First, I graduated from North.
Oh, okay, so I went to Northfor my senior year.
So well, it's all right.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Marist for three.
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
Set me on a path.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Exactly, exactly.
That's awesome, well, thank youfor coming and for being part
of this conversation, because Ithink it's important for a lot
of people.
It's crazy how much this reallyblew up and exploded here in
Cape Coral.
So many parents understandablyconcerned about this situation.
So I think it's good to betalking about the next steps
here for sure.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
Well, I would say first, the statute came.
I think it was 2021, where wepassed a digital threat spill.
Right, if you make a threatover any type of social media
text message, anything like that, that is elevated to a felony.
In this case, the individualwho posted the threat is the one
(03:09):
who transmitted that threatover a social media platform,
and the individual that saidsomething wasn't necessarily
because they weren't the onethat.
It wasn't their account thatthey posted that.
It wasn't their account thatthey posted.
So there is a gap in thestatute that we're hoping to
(03:29):
address.
Now, when you're looking at abill, it's not just going up to
Tallahassee and saying, hey, Iwant to submit this, so you've
got to have a Senate sponsor,you've got to have a House
sponsor and it goes through thecommittee process.
So a bill like this wouldprobably hit criminal justice,
possibly hit criminal justiceappropriations, and then the big
(03:50):
judiciary committee.
Before going to the House floor, it has to go through the same
process in the Senate, so thatSenate sponsors now got to push
that bill all the way through.
They may have differentcommittee stops and then
eventually go to their floor andthen either.
Sometimes the bills don'texactly align the exact same
language, and sometimes you know, there's little tweaks that got
(04:13):
to be made.
And that's when the negotiationhappens and say, hey, which
version are we going to take?
Right, and then either we'llpass ours over or they'll pass
theirs over, and then we'll takethat up, and then, once it
passes, then it goes to thegovernor's desk.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
And when you said ours and theirs, you're talking
about the two different chambersof government, much like the
United States Senate and theUnited States House of
Representatives.
We have the same thing in thestate of Florida state Senate
and state house.
So you guys will do your bill,the Senate will do their bill.
They jive.
Some of the language will becongruent, Some of it won't.
You pick the best of the two orthe most that's going to pass.
(04:52):
And those speed bumps, if youwill, are intentional to take
this case out of it, to keepemotion from letting something
steamroll through that.
Oh, we didn't think about that.
We didn't think about that.
We didn't think about that.
We were letting a motion drivethe train.
And then you get a law thatreally wasn't fully thought out
and formulated.
So that's done on purpose.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
Yeah, so I'll tell you this.
So this year I passed a bill onlarge scale events.
You know, people just breakingand trespassing.
It's a trespassing bill.
It's really for large scaleevents.
So 5, people just breaking andtrespassing.
It's a trespassing bill.
It's really for large scaleevents.
So 5,000 people or more.
So if it's like a football gameor a concert or something, and
this was all in a response tothe soccer games where everybody
(05:37):
just trampled over all the lawenforcement and just and just
busted through the gates, mostof them didn't have tickets.
And that bill, as it started andwe worked with Miami-Dade
County Sheriff with that didn't.
I mean the way it ended up onthe end was not the same right.
It went through a process.
They looked at, well, you know,juveniles at a county fair.
(05:58):
What if they just jumped thefence?
You know we can't up that to afelony Right.
So they took all those thingsinto account before it got to
the final stop, because wewanted to make sure that we did
our due diligence.
We ran out of the traps and wedon't have unintended
consequences when we pass apiece of law.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
So grownups getting paid to do grownup things.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
Right, we're kind of grownups sometimes yeah,
politics.
But yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
No, that's exactly right, because you don't want
that.
I remember that law that wasthe Leo Messi law.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes , yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, yep,
that's it.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
The Messi law.
Yeah, very, not messy like amess, but like the M-E-S-S-I.
Yeah one of the greatest soccerplayers.
That caused such an excitementthat we now have legislation
because of it.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
Yeah, because it was all a misdemeanor, right, Right.
Same thing with the gaming bill.
I know we have these littlearcades and casinos that pop up
all over the place.
They're illegal and so we had agambling bill that addressed a
number of things, but it did saythat essentially it was a
felony if you were a manager ofany one of those establishments.
(07:06):
Because it's a misdemeanor,it's very difficult for law
enforcement to be able toenforce that.
And if it's a misdemeanorstoring all the arcade equipment
, if you seize it all, there's alot of cost that goes into
those things.
So, in order for us to kind ofshepherd this piece of
legislation through, had to gothrough my committee, which I
(07:26):
chair industries andprofessional activities and I
had to go through criminaljustice.
So there was a process that Ihad to go through.
I mean, the way it started isnot even close to the way it
ended, just because of all thetweaks and all the things that
you have to flush out.
And we have a great staff inTallahassee that will go through
and rooms of lawyers that justkind of comb through the
(07:50):
legislation to make sure thatwe're not violating
constitutional issues.
And when the bill passes, ourgoal is to not prevent it from
having to go to the SupremeCourt and go through the whole
process.
So there's a lot of duediligence that goes into these
bills.
Our goal is to not prevent itfrom having to go to the Supreme
court and go through the wholeprocess.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
So you know so there's a lot of due diligence
that goes into these bills and,because of those different
committees, there's a differentlens to look at one particular
problem.
So you talk about a businesslens, you think you have all of
it figured out, and then youtake what you have and you give
it to the law enforcement sideand they're like wait a second,
there's X, y, z or the other wayaround, right when, if it was
police driven, these are all thethings that make our life
(08:29):
easier to do this.
And then, well, wait a minute,there's a lot of business
components that you're not awareof and you have to put those
together to make a solid pieceof legislation.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
Yeah, you know there's a great examples.
There was a piece oflegislation that the state
attorneys were really, reallyworking on and there is an issue
we just gotta we the.
The solution that the bill it'sa social media bill um that was
proposed is not necessarily thebusiness friendly way to do it
(08:57):
and it could cause a lot ofunintended consequences.
Um, essentially getting rid ofend-to-end encryption, so that
could pose a whole other issuewhen it comes to cybersecurity,
privacy, all those differentthings.
And I get the intent is great.
They want to make sure thatkids that are on social media,
(09:18):
parents have access, lawenforcement has access, but the
bill was initially just to endan encryption and that is next
to impossible for a platform.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
That's a multi-billion dollar business
model for a lot of people andyou're trying to create
legislation to end that andthat's not going to work To
their credit they're.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
I mean, I've had great conversations.
We have an amazing stateattorney, amira Fox, yes, and we
talked extensively about this.
And next year we're going, andnext year I'm hopeful that we're
going to put something togetherto kind of get something
through that helps safeguard.
And sometimes legislationdoesn't make it through the
(09:59):
process and it takes two, three,four, five, six years to
actually get through because ofjust all the complexity of it,
you know.
I mean sometimes it's reallyuprooting a massive, you know,
lots of industry, a lot ofchanges that really have to be
(10:20):
vetted out very carefully.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
So on a visual, you think of legislation in
Tallahassee as one big gearwheel, but really inside of it
there's a lot of different gearsthat are spinning and they all
have to align for a bill to pass.
So if we circle back to the onewe're talking about with the
cyber threat that was posted,it's not as simple as hey, wait
(10:42):
a second, that doesn't makesense.
Let's get up there and just getthis through.
There's a lot of differentlevers and hurdles that would
have to go.
So an example would be a kidright, not a grown man that
we're talking about in this case, but a kid is 15, his brain
isn't fully developed, sayssomething stupid and it happens
(11:04):
to get witnessed by somebody.
Somebody else is on their phonefilming, and I'm filming over
here and I pick you up sayingsomething stupid if we're not
careful.
The intention isn't for you togo to jail for saying something
stupid with a major felony.
We have to make sure that thosethings are vetted out, right.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
Yes, and then how do you differentiate the case that
happened with the adult justrecently at the school or
regarding the school?
And then how do youdifferentiate that between a kid
just being so angry they don'tknow how to express themselves
but other than say somethingdumb, right, right.
And so you and that's because Ibrought this up to judiciary
(11:41):
when we had the conversation andthat was the concern Like hey,
well, what happens if a10-year-old kid just said
something stupid, right?
Which happens often.
What happens?
I have three kids that you know.
And so then what do you do,right?
You can't just go and say, ohwell, it's automatically felony,
done right, or so.
(12:03):
You have to be really carefulon how you do this, otherwise
you're causing way more damagelong term for people's lives,
you know, than than any good.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
So there's a lot of nuance to it, which is why the
gap is there to begin with.
I'm sure it's.
You know, there's so manydifferent scenarios and trying
to find a piece of legislationthat covers all of it, but not
overextending, you know verysmart, well-intended people
wrote this law when it firstcame out.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
They didn't just without thought do it, but it's
impossible to envision everyscenario that would come up, and
there are times like this whereit falls outside and it is a
gap.
But that's why we're doing whatwe're doing, so to
differentiate between a10-year-old doing 10-year-old
things and a 25-year-old manwith a very specific location,
(12:55):
date method.
I think there's some work inthere and that's what we're
doing right now.
And we started long before thisblew up.
We were having theseconversations.
This blew up, we were havingthese conversations.
So I think that's one of themain takeaways I have is that
this is what your government inaction looks like.
You have people that areentrusted, like myself, to run
(13:17):
the police department and I'maccountable to safety in this
community, and when it's out ofmy purview, you don't just quit.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
You find the people that will help, pick up the
baton and work with them, andthat's what we're doing here
yeah, and if you look at likethe, the digital uh, digital
threat spill that that passed afew years back, that this other
kid that uploaded it gotessentially got in trouble for I
mean it's pretty clear.
I mean you have to think aboutit, take it and post it right,
(13:46):
so that was very easy to say hey, hey, this comes under the
digital threat.
You, you took the action to sayI'm going to, I'm going to take
the next step and post thisRight, so that's, that's a
little easier.
But when somebody is just anger, there's emotion or something,
and and says something, thenyou're like all right now is
that like real?
And?
And I talked to some of theSros and and and and I mean they
(14:10):
do a great job, um, and a lotof them.
They said probably 90 of thethings that kids say is out of
stupidity, right, right and thisis a new one in that it's a a
tag team effort.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
you know the legislation and when you close
your eyes and envision a threator envision what this law was
for, it's a sole operatorFormulated the thought, posted
the thought, communicated thethought in some digital fashion
and did it.
It's all encompassing.
That's what it was intended for.
That's easy.
That's the majority of thesecases.
But you get these oddballs thathappen like this and we can't
(14:49):
just wash our hands of it.
We've got to find a way to doit, but it's got to be balanced
with common sense.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
And I think you know, maybe also taking the approach,
as you know, a specific action,right, like you know, they say
they're going to take their youknow, ak-47 or AR or whatever
and do X, y and Z to to X, y andZ, right, like that is a
specific action.
There was some thought behindit, right, you know.
So, maybe addressing that, andthat's the conversations that we
(15:15):
had in Tallahassee, kind offiguring out what's the balance
between you know, a kid justone-off saying something dumb to
you know, somebody actuallysaying what they're going to do?
Speaker 2 (15:29):
how they're going to do it and when they're going to
do, how they're going to do itand when they're going to do it,
which is very specific andthoughtful.
That's what's comforting to meon many levels as the chief of
police, that we identified aproblem.
We work with the legislatureand we're moving that
professionally.
That's comforting for me thatwe're moving.
As a resident of the city takemy profession out of it I'm
comforted to know that thepeople that are elected to
represent me and my family aredoing that action and then, as a
(15:51):
parent with somebody a child inthe schools here, to know that
they're doing that to protectour kids.
I'm very comforted by that.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
Yeah we do that with.
I mean I get a lot of other.
I mean the building industry.
You know people at school likethey always come up and talk to
me about different ideas orthoughts and you know sometimes
you know we'll take that andfigure out if it's got legs and
(16:22):
if there's something that reallyneeds to be done or sometimes
it's just a one-off right.
Can't respond and create morewords on a page.
Just a one-off right and can'tcan't respond and create more
words on a page for just one-offsituations.
So but we got to make sure andbe thoughtful when I don't like
creating unnecessary laws.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
Right, because then it gums up the works and it's
never going to be enforced.
Or it's really?
Speaker 1 (16:44):
it's more of an emotional response instead of a
tactical response but and itgets in the way of other things
that have a chance getting done,because it's bogging down the
system.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
And that happens a lot actually.
I mean there's I mean, yes,people have, you know, take an
emotional bill, they file anemotional bill, but normally by
the time it gets to the end it'sno longer emotional.
Right, there's a lot of folksthat weren't tied to that
situation or that are kind ofgoing through it and saying,
(17:14):
okay, we've got to change this.
I get the issue.
We've got to tweak this to makeit actual, something that could
be enforced.
You know, enforced or, you know, does it have a huge fiscal
impact?
Speaker 2 (17:30):
I mean, kind of a professional way of going.
What are we doing here?
Right you need somebody at theend to go wait.
What are we doing here?
Speaker 3 (17:37):
Yep, what's the?
What's the intent?
What are you trying to achieve?
And maybe this is not the wayto do it Right?
Yep, and that that happens alot.
And then fiscal impact.
You know last year we did thathappens a lot.
And then fiscal impact.
Last year the state's budgetwas like $116 billion.
(17:58):
We're proposing $113 now.
As the house, we're trying todrop that budget down.
Florida's been good for manyyears.
We don't need to keepincreasing spending.
So we're trying to pull back ona lot of the spending.
And so when we look at thesebills that come through you know
some of these bills.
You know we've had a.
We had a bill that um was comingthrough my committee and
(18:20):
ultimately I didn't hear it Um,it had a $16 million fiscal
impact.
Yeah, nothing's free, nothing'sfree.
So I knew that, if you know so,I told the bill sponsor.
I said, hey, if you got to getrid of this fiscal impact, I
can't.
We can't go and just pass abunch of bills that that have
these huge financial burdens tothe state.
(18:41):
So they went back and theytried and there was just no way
to to cut out the fiscal impact.
And I said, well, you know,then you go.
What's the intent?
What are you trying?
What's the goal that you'retrying to?
What are you trying to fix?
In this case it was, you know,with animals and stuff.
So I said, well, this is whatyou're trying to achieve.
Let's figure out another way todo that.
(19:01):
There may be something alreadyin place, correct, you know?
Figuring out another path toget there without causing a 16
million dollar impact to youknow, I think the impact would
have been to Commissioner ofAgriculture.
So it's, it's.
You got to look at all thosethings in place and I have a
personal rule If, if, if thebill has more than half a
(19:23):
million dollars in a fiscal, I'mgoing to take a little bit
closer, look and figure out whyAll those things are part of the
equation.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
End result and goal will always trump process.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
Yes, oh yeah, to possibly go through an
appropriations committee andeach committee, each one of
those subs, probably have around17, 18 people on it.
The big committees, which iscommerce, judiciary, state
affairs, would have about 24, 25people.
So there's more people on it.
There's 120 members in theHouse total and 40 in the Senate
(20:21):
.
The house total and 40 in theSenate.
And um you know once it goes tothose committees usually I mean
I've seen bills after the budgetcommittee stop.
Or if it gets to that bigcommittee commerce or state
affairs, um, it just won't getpassed, it won't just, it just
won't move through Right.
Um, a stalled bill stall, itstalled right for whatever
(20:43):
reason.
And we usually try to let themembers know hey, this is why
we're not going to hear it.
Sure.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
So a couple of takeaways that I get from that.
Very educational, first of all,and I knew a little bit about
the legislature and that process, but I still learned Very
informative for our viewers.
But this particular one thatwe're talking about with the
school threat, this does havemerit.
(21:11):
There is a winnable path.
We're already moving towardsthat.
We can't guarantee anything onthe end after hearing everything
, but we are moving forward.
And here's some inside baseballfor people that maybe don't know
about Mike G.
We've had a relationship foryears.
We worked through Ian togetherand all kinds of different
legislative sessions and Mikecalls me 10 to 1, then I call
(21:33):
him and the calls that Mikegives me are what do you need?
What can I do for you?
What will benefit you here?
Or our work in Tallahassee.
He's always doing hometownservant stewardship for us and I
feel bad because, like Mike,we're good, we're good, we're
moving, we're moving.
And I hate that it was thisparticular case, but I went.
(21:56):
I know who to call and it was.
I finally get to call himinstead and what was really
great about it wasn't oh man, Icall you all the time because
you know politics stuff,absolutely not.
It was right away man Numberone.
I know about it, I saw it, I'minvested in it, let's go.
(22:16):
And that was something.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
Well, and I appreciate that and again,
that's my job, right, that'swhat I'm supposed to do.
I'm supposed to, you know,respond, but I get more calls
from other areas of the state,you know, asking for stuff than
I do from home.
So it's, but it's good.
I mean, you're resourceful, youknow you only ask when you need
(22:40):
something, and that's good andthat's noted.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
So we appreciate that .
We appreciate you doing allthis and coming here to have
this conversation today.
I know you're a busy guy, socoming all the way to the Cape
Coral Police Department, capeCopcast, checking out our
podcast studio, we appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
For sure, thank you for having me when do you go
back?
I don't know, we haven't.
So we extended session becausewe have not finalized the budget
yet.
We're still in negotiationswith the Senate.
I'm hopeful, I think, we'll beback at some point next week to
(23:21):
start going through.
We call it conferencing.
Um, to start going through, wecall it conferencing.
So we take, you know, we have aframework right now of kind of
an idea of where we're going toagree on when it comes to the
budget, um, with the Senate.
And now it's just line by linesaying okay, what about this,
what about that, how much moneywould I want to put to that?
You know, um, so, uh, sohealthcare is by far the largest
(23:44):
chunk of the state's budget andschools are right around second
.
But we'll go start going throughand figuring out places to cut.
It's interesting when you startgoing through that process and
you see some of these agenciesand they ask you know they ask
for money and they ask for lotsof money and you start to look
(24:05):
at places where like, can we cuthere?
Can we cut there, can we getthere?
And ultimately, you know we'relooking at large tax cuts for
the state.
So we're trying to figure outhow do we reduce the budget.
You know we've been.
You know the budget's beenlarge.
You know 116, $117 billion lastyear.
(24:29):
Let's's try to reduce it.
So that's what we're going tobe doing just moving forward and
some of these bills that wereattached to a budget, kind of
like what I said some of thebills do have huge fiscal
impacts um, uh, 100, 200, 300million dollars so and most of
them are education and healthbills, things like that.
But we will go in and startnegotiating on all those parts.
(24:49):
So I think we'll be, we'll begood Hard work man.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
Yeah, seriously.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
But I appreciate it because it's a it's difficult.
These are some things are arevery important to people.
And then relief fiscal relief.
Especially now it's veryimportant for Floridians and
Southwest.
Floridians especially, so we'regrateful, yeah, I know,
absolutely Happy to do it.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
Well, thank you guys so much and we will catch you
next time.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
Have a good one.
Have a great weekend, thank you.
Welcome back to another episode of the Cape
Copcast Chiefs Chat Edition.
You can see I have a differentco-host today.
I have the Chief your elevatedas co-host for us.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
I've been promoted, congratulations.
Yeah, how's it feel?
Speaker 1 (00:16):
It feels good, yeah, so Mercedes is still on
maternity leave.
She's going to be back, don'tworry, but the Chief is going to
be my co-host today because wehave a special guest.
You might have just heard him.
We have State RepresentativeMike Giolombardo with us today
and we wanted to kind of take adeeper dive into the next steps
when it comes to how we addresslegislation and things like that
(00:38):
.
This is all born from aconversation that we had about
the recent school threats.
Chief.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Yeah, this is at the end of that episode we talked
about.
Just to recap, for those whomight not be aware, we had kind
of an oddball case where therewas a school threat where an
individual made the threatverbally.
It was videotaped and uploadedto social media by another
individual and the statutecaptures that activity, the
(01:04):
posting of it, which resulted inthe felony charge of a written
or posted school threat, and theindividual who made the
comments did not meet thecriteria for that charge.
We were able to subsequentlyarrest him on a different charge
, but the question was why?
Why couldn't we arrest him for?
Speaker 3 (01:23):
that.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
And the law is the law.
And at the end of that episodewe said on Next Steps, we're
going to engage the staterepresentative for our community
, which is Mike G Lombardo, thatI have a relationship with.
I talked to him that weekendand said Mike, are you aware of
what happened?
You talk about a guy who's intune locally.
(01:44):
Yes, he is.
He's from Cape Coral, likemyself, a Mariner grad.
He's got kids in school, so itwas very front of mind for him.
And he said absolutely, I sawit.
What can we do?
And that's where thatpartnership had already been
there but for this particularissue really went into action.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Well, it's nice to have these partnerships, because
now you can not to say this ina negative way, but take
advantage of it, right?
This is where we can actuallycreate some action to come from
something like this.
So thank you for coming todayno, absolutely.
It is awesome to have you here.
How are you doing?
Speaker 3 (02:14):
I'm doing well.
First, I graduated from North.
Oh, okay, so I went to Northfor my senior year.
So well, it's all right.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Marist for three.
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
Set me on a path.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Exactly, exactly.
That's awesome, well, thank youfor coming and for being part
of this conversation, because Ithink it's important for a lot
of people.
It's crazy how much this reallyblew up and exploded here in
Cape Coral.
So many parents understandablyconcerned about this situation.
So I think it's good to betalking about the next steps
here for sure.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
Well, I would say first, the statute came.
I think it was 2021, where wepassed a digital threat spill.
Right, if you make a threatover any type of social media
text message, anything like that, that is elevated to a felony.
In this case, the individualwho posted the threat is the one
(03:09):
who transmitted that threatover a social media platform,
and the individual that saidsomething wasn't necessarily
because they weren't the onethat.
It wasn't their account thatthey posted that.
It wasn't their account thatthey posted.
So there is a gap in thestatute that we're hoping to
(03:29):
address.
Now, when you're looking at abill, it's not just going up to
Tallahassee and saying, hey, Iwant to submit this, so you've
got to have a Senate sponsor,you've got to have a House
sponsor and it goes through thecommittee process.
So a bill like this wouldprobably hit criminal justice,
possibly hit criminal justiceappropriations, and then the big
(03:50):
judiciary committee.
Before going to the House floor, it has to go through the same
process in the Senate, so thatSenate sponsors now got to push
that bill all the way through.
They may have differentcommittee stops and then
eventually go to their floor andthen either.
Sometimes the bills don'texactly align the exact same
language, and sometimes you know, there's little tweaks that got
(04:13):
to be made.
And that's when the negotiationhappens and say, hey, which
version are we going to take?
Right, and then either we'llpass ours over or they'll pass
theirs over, and then we'll takethat up, and then, once it
passes, then it goes to thegovernor's desk.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
And when you said ours and theirs, you're talking
about the two different chambersof government, much like the
United States Senate and theUnited States House of
Representatives.
We have the same thing in thestate of Florida state Senate
and state house.
So you guys will do your bill,the Senate will do their bill.
They jive.
Some of the language will becongruent, Some of it won't.
You pick the best of the two orthe most that's going to pass.
(04:52):
And those speed bumps, if youwill, are intentional to take
this case out of it, to keepemotion from letting something
steamroll through that.
Oh, we didn't think about that.
We didn't think about that.
We didn't think about that.
We were letting a motion drivethe train.
And then you get a law thatreally wasn't fully thought out
and formulated.
So that's done on purpose.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
Yeah, so I'll tell you this.
So this year I passed a bill onlarge scale events.
You know, people just breakingand trespassing.
It's a trespassing bill.
It's really for large scaleevents.
So 5, people just breaking andtrespassing.
It's a trespassing bill.
It's really for large scaleevents.
So 5,000 people or more.
So if it's like a football gameor a concert or something, and
this was all in a response tothe soccer games where everybody
(05:37):
just trampled over all the lawenforcement and just and just
busted through the gates, mostof them didn't have tickets.
And that bill, as it started andwe worked with Miami-Dade
County Sheriff with that didn't.
I mean the way it ended up onthe end was not the same right.
It went through a process.
They looked at, well, you know,juveniles at a county fair.
(05:58):
What if they just jumped thefence?
You know we can't up that to afelony Right.
So they took all those thingsinto account before it got to
the final stop, because wewanted to make sure that we did
our due diligence.
We ran out of the traps and wedon't have unintended
consequences when we pass apiece of law.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
So grownups getting paid to do grownup things.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
Right, we're kind of grownups sometimes yeah,
politics.
But yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
No, that's exactly right, because you don't want
that.
I remember that law that wasthe Leo Messi law.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes , yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, yep,
that's it.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
The Messi law.
Yeah, very, not messy like amess, but like the M-E-S-S-I.
Yeah one of the greatest soccerplayers.
That caused such an excitementthat we now have legislation
because of it.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
Yeah, because it was all a misdemeanor, right, Right.
Same thing with the gaming bill.
I know we have these littlearcades and casinos that pop up
all over the place.
They're illegal and so we had agambling bill that addressed a
number of things, but it did saythat essentially it was a
felony if you were a manager ofany one of those establishments.
(07:06):
Because it's a misdemeanor,it's very difficult for law
enforcement to be able toenforce that.
And if it's a misdemeanorstoring all the arcade equipment
, if you seize it all, there's alot of cost that goes into
those things.
So, in order for us to kind ofshepherd this piece of
legislation through, had to gothrough my committee, which I
(07:26):
chair industries andprofessional activities and I
had to go through criminaljustice.
So there was a process that Ihad to go through.
I mean, the way it started isnot even close to the way it
ended, just because of all thetweaks and all the things that
you have to flush out.
And we have a great staff inTallahassee that will go through
and rooms of lawyers that justkind of comb through the
(07:50):
legislation to make sure thatwe're not violating
constitutional issues.
And when the bill passes, ourgoal is to not prevent it from
having to go to the SupremeCourt and go through the whole
process.
So there's a lot of duediligence that goes into these
bills.
Our goal is to not prevent itfrom having to go to the Supreme
court and go through the wholeprocess.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
So you know so there's a lot of due diligence
that goes into these bills and,because of those different
committees, there's a differentlens to look at one particular
problem.
So you talk about a businesslens, you think you have all of
it figured out, and then youtake what you have and you give
it to the law enforcement sideand they're like wait a second,
there's X, y, z or the other wayaround, right when, if it was
police driven, these are all thethings that make our life
(08:29):
easier to do this.
And then, well, wait a minute,there's a lot of business
components that you're not awareof and you have to put those
together to make a solid pieceof legislation.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
Yeah, you know there's a great examples.
There was a piece oflegislation that the state
attorneys were really, reallyworking on and there is an issue
we just gotta we the.
The solution that the bill it'sa social media bill um that was
proposed is not necessarily thebusiness friendly way to do it
(08:57):
and it could cause a lot ofunintended consequences.
Um, essentially getting rid ofend-to-end encryption, so that
could pose a whole other issuewhen it comes to cybersecurity,
privacy, all those differentthings.
And I get the intent is great.
They want to make sure thatkids that are on social media,
(09:18):
parents have access, lawenforcement has access, but the
bill was initially just to endan encryption and that is next
to impossible for a platform.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
That's a multi-billion dollar business
model for a lot of people andyou're trying to create
legislation to end that andthat's not going to work To
their credit they're.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
I mean, I've had great conversations.
We have an amazing stateattorney, amira Fox, yes, and we
talked extensively about this.
And next year we're going, andnext year I'm hopeful that we're
going to put something togetherto kind of get something
through that helps safeguard.
And sometimes legislationdoesn't make it through the
(09:59):
process and it takes two, three,four, five, six years to
actually get through because ofjust all the complexity of it,
you know.
I mean sometimes it's reallyuprooting a massive, you know,
lots of industry, a lot ofchanges that really have to be
(10:20):
vetted out very carefully.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
So on a visual, you think of legislation in
Tallahassee as one big gearwheel, but really inside of it
there's a lot of different gearsthat are spinning and they all
have to align for a bill to pass.
So if we circle back to the onewe're talking about with the
cyber threat that was posted,it's not as simple as hey, wait
(10:42):
a second, that doesn't makesense.
Let's get up there and just getthis through.
There's a lot of differentlevers and hurdles that would
have to go.
So an example would be a kidright, not a grown man that
we're talking about in this case, but a kid is 15, his brain
isn't fully developed, sayssomething stupid and it happens
(11:04):
to get witnessed by somebody.
Somebody else is on their phonefilming, and I'm filming over
here and I pick you up sayingsomething stupid if we're not
careful.
The intention isn't for you togo to jail for saying something
stupid with a major felony.
We have to make sure that thosethings are vetted out, right.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
Yes, and then how do you differentiate the case that
happened with the adult justrecently at the school or
regarding the school?
And then how do youdifferentiate that between a kid
just being so angry they don'tknow how to express themselves
but other than say somethingdumb, right, right.
And so you and that's because Ibrought this up to judiciary
(11:41):
when we had the conversation andthat was the concern Like hey,
well, what happens if a10-year-old kid just said
something stupid, right?
Which happens often.
What happens?
I have three kids that you know.
And so then what do you do,right?
You can't just go and say, ohwell, it's automatically felony,
done right, or so.
(12:03):
You have to be really carefulon how you do this, otherwise
you're causing way more damagelong term for people's lives,
you know, than than any good.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
So there's a lot of nuance to it, which is why the
gap is there to begin with.
I'm sure it's.
You know, there's so manydifferent scenarios and trying
to find a piece of legislationthat covers all of it, but not
overextending, you know verysmart, well-intended people
wrote this law when it firstcame out.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
They didn't just without thought do it, but it's
impossible to envision everyscenario that would come up, and
there are times like this whereit falls outside and it is a
gap.
But that's why we're doing whatwe're doing, so to
differentiate between a10-year-old doing 10-year-old
things and a 25-year-old manwith a very specific location,
(12:55):
date method.
I think there's some work inthere and that's what we're
doing right now.
And we started long before thisblew up.
We were having theseconversations.
This blew up, we were havingthese conversations.
So I think that's one of themain takeaways I have is that
this is what your government inaction looks like.
You have people that areentrusted, like myself, to run
(13:17):
the police department and I'maccountable to safety in this
community, and when it's out ofmy purview, you don't just quit.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
You find the people that will help, pick up the
baton and work with them, andthat's what we're doing here
yeah, and if you look at likethe, the digital uh, digital
threat spill that that passed afew years back, that this other
kid that uploaded it gotessentially got in trouble for I
mean it's pretty clear.
I mean you have to think aboutit, take it and post it right,
(13:46):
so that was very easy to say hey, hey, this comes under the
digital threat.
You, you took the action to sayI'm going to, I'm going to take
the next step and post thisRight, so that's, that's a
little easier.
But when somebody is just anger, there's emotion or something,
and and says something, thenyou're like all right now is
that like real?
And?
And I talked to some of theSros and and and and I mean they
(14:10):
do a great job, um, and a lotof them.
They said probably 90 of thethings that kids say is out of
stupidity, right, right and thisis a new one in that it's a a
tag team effort.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
you know the legislation and when you close
your eyes and envision a threator envision what this law was
for, it's a sole operatorFormulated the thought, posted
the thought, communicated thethought in some digital fashion
and did it.
It's all encompassing.
That's what it was intended for.
That's easy.
That's the majority of thesecases.
But you get these oddballs thathappen like this and we can't
(14:49):
just wash our hands of it.
We've got to find a way to doit, but it's got to be balanced
with common sense.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
And I think you know, maybe also taking the approach,
as you know, a specific action,right, like you know, they say
they're going to take their youknow, ak-47 or AR or whatever
and do X, y and Z to to X, y andZ, right, like that is a
specific action.
There was some thought behindit, right, you know.
So, maybe addressing that, andthat's the conversations that we
(15:15):
had in Tallahassee, kind offiguring out what's the balance
between you know, a kid justone-off saying something dumb to
you know, somebody actuallysaying what they're going to do?
Speaker 2 (15:29):
how they're going to do it and when they're going to
do, how they're going to do itand when they're going to do it,
which is very specific andthoughtful.
That's what's comforting to meon many levels as the chief of
police, that we identified aproblem.
We work with the legislatureand we're moving that
professionally.
That's comforting for me thatwe're moving.
As a resident of the city takemy profession out of it I'm
comforted to know that thepeople that are elected to
represent me and my family aredoing that action and then, as a
(15:51):
parent with somebody a child inthe schools here, to know that
they're doing that to protectour kids.
I'm very comforted by that.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
Yeah we do that with.
I mean I get a lot of other.
I mean the building industry.
You know people at school likethey always come up and talk to
me about different ideas orthoughts and you know sometimes
you know we'll take that andfigure out if it's got legs and
(16:22):
if there's something that reallyneeds to be done or sometimes
it's just a one-off right.
Can't respond and create morewords on a page.
Just a one-off right and can'tcan't respond and create more
words on a page for just one-offsituations.
So but we got to make sure andbe thoughtful when I don't like
creating unnecessary laws.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
Right, because then it gums up the works and it's
never going to be enforced.
Or it's really?
Speaker 1 (16:44):
it's more of an emotional response instead of a
tactical response but and itgets in the way of other things
that have a chance getting done,because it's bogging down the
system.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
And that happens a lot actually.
I mean there's I mean, yes,people have, you know, take an
emotional bill, they file anemotional bill, but normally by
the time it gets to the end it'sno longer emotional.
Right, there's a lot of folksthat weren't tied to that
situation or that are kind ofgoing through it and saying,
(17:14):
okay, we've got to change this.
I get the issue.
We've got to tweak this to makeit actual, something that could
be enforced.
You know, enforced or, you know, does it have a huge fiscal
impact?
Speaker 2 (17:30):
I mean, kind of a professional way of going.
What are we doing here?
Right you need somebody at theend to go wait.
What are we doing here?
Speaker 3 (17:37):
Yep, what's the?
What's the intent?
What are you trying to achieve?
And maybe this is not the wayto do it Right?
Yep, and that that happens alot.
And then fiscal impact.
You know last year we did thathappens a lot.
And then fiscal impact.
Last year the state's budgetwas like $116 billion.
(17:58):
We're proposing $113 now.
As the house, we're trying todrop that budget down.
Florida's been good for manyyears.
We don't need to keepincreasing spending.
So we're trying to pull back ona lot of the spending.
And so when we look at thesebills that come through you know
some of these bills.
You know we've had a.
We had a bill that um was comingthrough my committee and
(18:20):
ultimately I didn't hear it Um,it had a $16 million fiscal
impact.
Yeah, nothing's free, nothing'sfree.
So I knew that, if you know so,I told the bill sponsor.
I said, hey, if you got to getrid of this fiscal impact, I
can't.
We can't go and just pass abunch of bills that that have
these huge financial burdens tothe state.
(18:41):
So they went back and theytried and there was just no way
to to cut out the fiscal impact.
And I said, well, you know,then you go.
What's the intent?
What are you trying?
What's the goal that you'retrying to?
What are you trying to fix?
In this case it was, you know,with animals and stuff.
So I said, well, this is whatyou're trying to achieve.
Let's figure out another way todo that.
(19:01):
There may be something alreadyin place, correct, you know?
Figuring out another path toget there without causing a 16
million dollar impact to youknow, I think the impact would
have been to Commissioner ofAgriculture.
So it's, it's.
You got to look at all thosethings in place and I have a
personal rule If, if, if thebill has more than half a
(19:23):
million dollars in a fiscal, I'mgoing to take a little bit
closer, look and figure out whyAll those things are part of the
equation.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
End result and goal will always trump process.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
Yes, oh yeah, to possibly go through an
appropriations committee andeach committee, each one of
those subs, probably have around17, 18 people on it.
The big committees, which iscommerce, judiciary, state
affairs, would have about 24, 25people.
So there's more people on it.
There's 120 members in theHouse total and 40 in the Senate
(20:21):
.
The house total and 40 in theSenate.
And um you know once it goes tothose committees usually I mean
I've seen bills after the budgetcommittee stop.
Or if it gets to that bigcommittee commerce or state
affairs, um, it just won't getpassed, it won't just, it just
won't move through Right.
Um, a stalled bill stall, itstalled right for whatever
(20:43):
reason.
And we usually try to let themembers know hey, this is why
we're not going to hear it.
Sure.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
So a couple of takeaways that I get from that.
Very educational, first of all,and I knew a little bit about
the legislature and that process, but I still learned Very
informative for our viewers.
But this particular one thatwe're talking about with the
school threat, this does havemerit.
(21:11):
There is a winnable path.
We're already moving towardsthat.
We can't guarantee anything onthe end after hearing everything
, but we are moving forward.
And here's some inside baseballfor people that maybe don't know
about Mike G.
We've had a relationship foryears.
We worked through Ian togetherand all kinds of different
legislative sessions and Mikecalls me 10 to 1, then I call
(21:33):
him and the calls that Mikegives me are what do you need?
What can I do for you?
What will benefit you here?
Or our work in Tallahassee.
He's always doing hometownservant stewardship for us and I
feel bad because, like Mike,we're good, we're good, we're
moving, we're moving.
And I hate that it was thisparticular case, but I went.
(21:56):
I know who to call and it was.
I finally get to call himinstead and what was really
great about it wasn't oh man, Icall you all the time because
you know politics stuff,absolutely not.
It was right away man Numberone.
I know about it, I saw it, I'minvested in it, let's go.
(22:16):
And that was something.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
Well, and I appreciate that and again,
that's my job, right, that'swhat I'm supposed to do.
I'm supposed to, you know,respond, but I get more calls
from other areas of the state,you know, asking for stuff than
I do from home.
So it's, but it's good.
I mean, you're resourceful, youknow you only ask when you need
(22:40):
something, and that's good andthat's noted.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
So we appreciate that .
We appreciate you doing allthis and coming here to have
this conversation today.
I know you're a busy guy, socoming all the way to the Cape
Coral Police Department, capeCopcast, checking out our
podcast studio, we appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
For sure, thank you for having me when do you go
back?
I don't know, we haven't.
So we extended session becausewe have not finalized the budget
yet.
We're still in negotiationswith the Senate.
I'm hopeful, I think, we'll beback at some point next week to
(23:21):
start going through.
We call it conferencing.
Um, to start going through, wecall it conferencing.
So we take, you know, we have aframework right now of kind of
an idea of where we're going toagree on when it comes to the
budget, um, with the Senate.
And now it's just line by linesaying okay, what about this,
what about that, how much moneywould I want to put to that?
You know, um, so, uh, sohealthcare is by far the largest
(23:44):
chunk of the state's budget andschools are right around second
.
But we'll go start going throughand figuring out places to cut.
It's interesting when you startgoing through that process and
you see some of these agenciesand they ask you know they ask
for money and they ask for lotsof money and you start to look
(24:05):
at places where like, can we cuthere?
Can we cut there, can we getthere?
And ultimately, you know we'relooking at large tax cuts for
the state.
So we're trying to figure outhow do we reduce the budget.
You know we've been.
You know the budget's beenlarge.
You know 116, $117 billion lastyear.
(24:29):
Let's's try to reduce it.
So that's what we're going tobe doing just moving forward and
some of these bills that wereattached to a budget, kind of
like what I said some of thebills do have huge fiscal
impacts um, uh, 100, 200, 300million dollars so and most of
them are education and healthbills, things like that.
But we will go in and startnegotiating on all those parts.
(24:49):
So I think we'll be, we'll begood Hard work man.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
Yeah, seriously.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
But I appreciate it because it's a it's difficult.
These are some things are arevery important to people.
And then relief fiscal relief.
Especially now it's veryimportant for Floridians and
Southwest.
Floridians especially, so we'regrateful, yeah, I know,
absolutely Happy to do it.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
Well, thank you guys so much and we will catch you
next time.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
Have a good one.
Have a great weekend, thank you.
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