I am excited to roll out the Back the Blue Campaign this week. Back the Blue highlights law enforcement officers, citizens and organizations taking extraordinary steps to protect communities and forge positive relationships between law enforcement and the communities they serve.

Supporting law enforcement is a top priority of mine and the mission of Back the Blue is to commend Florida’s brave law enforcement officers and the Floridians who back them.

The first recipient of this award is Zechariah Cartledge, a 10-year-old from Winter Springs.

Zechariah announced earlier that he will run one mile for each officer lost in the line of duty in 2018, amounting to 148 miles. In addition to the miles for 2018 fallen heroes, Zechariah has already committed to running miles for fallen officers in 2019. To date, Zechariah has run 46 miles for fallen officers.

I had the great pleasure of meeting Zechariah and his lovely family at this week’s Cabinet Meeting. I want to thank Zechariah's family for supporting his mission to honor our law enforcement.

Zechariah’s unique and passionate support for the law enforcement community is admirable. That is why he is the perfect first award recipient for our Back the Blue Campaign. I look forward to following his mission and praise him for bringing attention to the ultimate sacrifice these officers made.

Thank you, Zechariah, for being such a great role model for all of us as we are reminded of the selfless service of those in law enforcement.

You can read more about Zechariah’s incredible story by clicking here. To follow our Back the Blue campaign, click here.