By Gray Rohrer, The News Service of Florida <\/p>\n
Larry Keefe, who has previously played important roles in Gov. Ron DeSantis\u2019 administration, was appointed Tuesday by the Florida Cabinet as the next executive director for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.<\/p>\n
Keefe will take over for Mark Glass, who is leaving his post next month to become undersheriff for the Miami-Dade Sheriff\u2019s Office, as the Miami Herald first reported last week.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn every position he had he performed at the highest possible level,\u201d DeSantis said. \u201cLarry will lead the agency with distinction, ensuring the rule of law and public safety will remain a top priority.\u201d<\/p>\n
Keefe attended but did not speak before the Cabinet meeting, which was Glass\u2019 last in his current role.<\/p>\n
The FDLE is under the oversight of the governor and the Cabinet, which consists of the Attorney General James Uthmeier, Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia, and Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson, who all voted in favor of Keefe. DeSantis made the appointment, but it is subject to the vote of the Cabinet.<\/p>\n
Uthmeier thanked Glass for his efforts as the head of FDLE. Glass took over as acting executive director in May 2022 and formally took over permanently in August 2022.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe last few years FDLE\u2019s been handling a lot of new responsibilities, from retail theft to election fraud, assisting our child predator unit \u2013 we\u2019ve broken every record in the book on arrests and prosecutions,\u201d Uthmeier said. \u201cFlorda\u2019s at a record crime low in large part because of his leadership and help.\u201d<\/p>\n
Glass also oversaw Florida\u2019s new collaboration with the federal government in immigration enforcement efforts after a new law as passed in 2025 at DeSantis\u2019 urging to further crackdown on illegal immigration.<\/p>\n
As FDLE executive director Glass earned $198,000 per year.<\/p>\n
The appointment of Keefe was not originally on the Cabinet\u2019s public agenda. Simpson told reporters he only found out about the appointment on Monday.<\/p>\n
Keefe is a former federal prosecutor who was instrumental in DeSantis\u2019 push to remove former state attorney Andrew Warren of Hillsborough County from office for allegedly pledging not to enforce abortion laws. He also organized flights as part of a state operation that took undocumented immigrants from Texas and dropped them in Martha\u2019s Vineyard in Massachusetts.<\/p>\n
In those episodes he served as Florida\u2019s public safety czar, and later he held the position of executive director of the State Board of Immigration Enforcement, but left that job in October 2025.<\/p>\n
Keefe will take over at FDLE three months before the end of DeSantis\u2019 second term.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Gray Rohrer, The News Service of Florida Larry Keefe, who has previously played important roles in Gov.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":414748,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[232,234,233],"class_list":["post-414747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee-headlines","tag-tallahassee-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=414747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414747\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/414748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}