Police oversight boards now a target of law enforcement, Florida GOP lawmakers

TALLAHASSEE – Citizen oversight boards that review controversial actions by local police and corrections officers would be banned in the 21 Florida cities that now have them, under legislation advancing in the state House and Senate.

Battle lines over the measures are clear: Law enforcement organizations are in favor of doing away with the boards, while civil liberties and minority groups, along with advocates for ex-offenders, insist they should continue.

The Senate proposal (SB 576) cleared its first hearing Tuesday in the Senate Criminal Justice Committee. The House version (HB 601) has already been approved by two panels, with Republican majorities in both chambers backing law enforcement’s support for the ban.

“I actually think that these boards are divisive,” said Sen. Blaise Ingoglia, R-Spring Hill, a former Florida Republican Party chair. “I do not think that they are serving the public well other than to second-guess, again, in the court of public opinion.”

The boards are intended to hold law enforcement more accountable. About half of them formed following the death of George Floyd in 2020 at the hands of Minneapolis police.

But their scope is limited. Most are confined to investigating and issuing independent reports which follow a law enforcement agency’s own internal affairs probe of a matter involving an officer.

Boards caught up in divide over Black Lives Matter

But the emergence of these boards also has become swept up in the political divide over the Black Lives Matter movement. A Pew Research Center survey last year found that 84% of Democrats and those leaning Democratic support the movement while 82% of Republicans and GOP leaners oppose it.

Republicans used the terms “dangerous” and “divisive” to describe BLM. Democrats used “empowering” and “inclusive.”

Florida’s House and Senate have Republican supermajorities and under Gov. Ron DeSantis the state has enacted measures limiting the teaching of Black history and restricting voting access, as well as approving a congressional redistricting map that eliminated a long-held Black Democratic seat in North Florida and banning diversity offices in public universities.

Sen. Bobby Powell, D-West Palm Beach, told the Senate committee that the backlash against the review boards seems to fit into this political mosaic.

“Since the George Floyd incident, there were businesses and organizations and people and a certain air of empathy that came right after that,” Powell said. “But since then, as time has gone on, there’s been a hard shift backwards.”

Powell said that “if there is a problem with citizen review boards,” there should be standards about who can serve on these panels. Getting rid of them amounts to a power grab by the state, erasing the authority of local governments looking to calm communities riven by high-profile police incidents, he added.

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“We should be working to build trust between our law enforcement agencies and our communities,” he added.

Ingoglia said he was open to giving citizens input into law enforcement matters. But these roles should be confined to “policies and procedures,” he said, not individual police matters.

There are plenty of Florida cities with citizen oversight panels: Daytona Beach, Delray Beach, Fort Lauderdale, Gainesville, Key West, Orlando, Tallahassee, West Palm Beach and Tampa.

St. Petersburg’s board has been around since 1991. Miami has had some kind of oversight panel since surrounding Miami-Dade County began one in 1980 after four police officers were cleared of criminal charges in the death of motorist Arthur McDuffie.

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But the push to eliminate them is strong this year in the Capitol. Elimination of the boards also is portrayed as a potential recruitment incentive for law enforcement.

“Within the community of law enforcement ... it’s a very difficult job,” said Lisa Henning of the Florida Fraternal Order of Police. “The majority of law enforcement is body-cammed ... and these officers have the potential to be investigated not by one agency, but by six on a regular basis. This becomes very redundant.”

Officers will go where citizens boards aren't, FOP says

“It’s also very chilling to officers when they are considering what agency they are going to,” she added. “If they are going to be tried in the court of public opinion ... you’re going to find a law enforcement officer choosing to go to an agency that does not have a civilian review board.”

Laurette Philipsen of Pasco County said she was against banning the boards. She is a former inmate. “Rather than passing this bill, how about we promote open communication and collaboration between public agencies and the communities they serve?” she told senators.

Philipsen added, “Citizen oversight is the public trying to make things better and rather than continuing to hammer Florida citizens like nails, please don’t support (this bill).”

John Kennedy is a reporter in the USA TODAY Network’s Florida Capital Bureau. He can be reached at jkennedy2@gannett.com, or on Twitter at @JKennedyReport.

This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Citizen oversight boards that review Florida police could be banned