Activists’ hopes for seeing any kind of real change for Tampa’s embattled Citizen Review Board (CRB) will have to wait until at least three more months.
After hearing more than two hours of public comment on Feb. 25, and taking another two hours to workshop between themselves and the City of Tampa attorney’s office, Tampa City Councilman Bill Carlson fell on the sword and made a motion that City Attorney Gina Grimes and city council attorney Martin Shelby work together on a revised CRB ordinance to present to council for a first reading on May 20. Carlson’s motion passed without opposition.
RELATED
Local ACLU calls for common sense changes to Tampa’s police Citizens Review Board
During the public comment, council heard from community members, and representatives of the local ACLU chapter, who advocated for changes to existing language within the contentious CRB ordinance.
To recap, these changes concerned requests for:
- The ability of the CRB to receive complaints about the Tampa Police Department (TPD) directly, rather than having complaints filtered through the TPD
- Reducing the number of appointments made to the board by the mayor
- Giving the review board subpoena power to investigate officer-involved incidents (not subpoena individual officers)
- Establishing an independent attorney for the CRB that is unaffiliated with the city government
Advocates for a strong CRB hit on a number of talking points to appeal to the council, including enhanced community trust in policing, greater transparency, increased accountability, as well as potential savings for Tampa taxpayers.
Tiffany Hilton, a local Stetson Law student who spoke to the council last Thursday, highlighted TPD’s track record in paying out millions of dollars in settlements regarding police misconduct—$3.8 million, specifically, between 2006 to 2011 according to a study of police settlements in 19 municipalities. Although this wasn’t the largest sum among the cities studied, Tampa did rank first for the number of settlements paid out for violations of civil rights.
In 2017, the Tampa Police Department paid out $85,000 to settle two claims for K-9 bite injuries. Across Tampa Bay, taxpayers shouldered a bill of nearly $2 million for accusations of the misuse of K-9s and civilians injured by accidental K-9 bites.
City Council also heard from self-proclaimed community patriots who more or less parroted talking points from the local Police Benevolent Association (PBA) president who penned a Tampa Bay Times op-ed which said, in part, “…these proposals will actually do very little to improve the public’s trust and increase accountability and, instead, they will create a highly charged political bureaucracy aimed solely at second-guessing and undermining the credibility of the men and women in blue, who put their lives on the line every day to protect our communities.”
Greater Tampa Chapter of the ACLU of Florida legal panel member Julius Adams penned a rebuttal op-ed, which said, in part, that "Everyone—police and residents of Tampa—benefits from a review board that has earned the respect of the community, and can be a real voice for the community."
For two hours after a lunch recess, council members gave impassioned testimony, but rarely came to a consensus on exactly how and exactly which changes to adopt. In the end, council members voted unanimously to:
- Allow anyone arrested for a misdemeanor to be appointed to serve the board, or continue serving on the board, as long as they took a leave of absence to resolve the charges
- Ask Grimes and her team to start working on a 2022 amendment that would allow the CRB to hire an independent lawyer
Subpoena power for the CRB
When it came to one of the biggest asks—giving limited subpoena powers to the CRB—council members decided that voters should make that decision.
In a post-workshop email to Creative Loafing Tampa Bay, attorney James Shaw Jr., an ACLU volunteer who worked countless hours with others to work on drafting proposed changes to the CRB, reiterated that the proposed changes would mean the CRB can issue subpoenas to civilians but not to officers. Boards in Miami, Miami-Dade County, Broward County, Orange County, and Key West can all issue subpoenas, just like anyone engaged in a civil suit.
“Calling subpoenas ‘radical’ just isn’t honest. Subpoenas are available in every court case. If your doorbell camera records a car accident in front of your house and a lawsuit results, the plaintiff or defendant can subpoena your footage and show it to the jury even if there’s only $15 at stake,” Shaw wrote.
To him, public confidence in the courts’ conclusions is more important than any one person’s right to decide who gets to see a video of public concern. “People won’t trust the conclusion if important evidence goes unexamined,” Shaw added.
Without the subpoena power, someone with footage of an officer committing a crime could hide it from the rest of the city if they misguidedly thinks they’re “supporting” the police by helping them get away with misconduct, or if they’re afraid they’ll get harassed by Back the Blue types, or if he’d just rather not get involved. Shaw cited the 1963 8mm color motion picture sequence shot by Abraham Zapruder, which showed John F. Kennedy being assassinated.
“What if we had never seen the Zapruder film because Mr. Zapruder thought his right to do whatever he wants with his film was more important than the country’s right to know what happened in Dallas?,” Shaw asked.
Shaw is unsure why the PBA is fighting so hard against subpoena power; he argues that the reformed CRB would be uniquely situated to assure the public that the results of an internal investigation were correct and trustworthy. But that can only happen if the CRB has the public’s trust.
“It won’t have [that trust] if the public knows that there’s video footage that the CRB never got to review or eyewitness testimony that it never got to hear.,” Shaw wrote.
Playing the long game
The lack of clarity might be frustrating to some hoping to see council members take harder stances. During public comment, Kelly Benjamin, an activist with Tampa For Justice and occasional CL contributor said, “We’ve been going at this for nine months. We could have had a child by now. Let’s move forward.”
But the move to ask for the May 20 reading signals that council is taking the changes suggested by the ACLU and activists seriously; pro-police speakers were all largely OK with the city proposal presented by Grimes' team during today's meeting. Darla Portman, the city’s police union president, recently told the Times she’s “completely satisfied” with the city’s proposal… I’m like a kid in a toy store. If I get a few presents and they get a few presents. I’m good. I don’t need the whole toy store.”
“Legislation is a slow process that burns a lot of energy for a little bit of change,” Shaw added in his email to CL. “Having a strong CRB that the public can respect is important, but it’s not the magical answer that solves centuries-old problems overnight.”
At one point in the workshop, Councilman Orlando Gudes—a former cop—said real change won’t come until the police get the inside of the house in order. Shaw agreed.
“Law-enforcement officers have tremendous power. They can ruin or even end other people’s lives without a moment’s forethought, and they enjoy pretty much de facto immunity from consequences,” Shaw said.
No one else enjoys power like that, and Shaw believes that power needs checks and balances from the outside and from within.
It’s no secret that there are some cops who abuse that power by using it for personal ends, by using force that isn’t necessary, by withholding the benefit of the doubt where it’s deserved or giving it where it isn’t. Some cops are untruthful when they know they’ll be believed, and others use their power to keep some people down and lift others up according to their personal biases.
For Shaw, police who do that do so at the expense of the public’s trust in them.
“They have to get to a place culturally where they hold one another accountable. A CRB helps that happen by holding accountable those who fail to hold others accountable. It’s a step in the right direction and a step better taken than not taken,” Shaw said. “But in the end, something more fundamental has to change. This was just a small step toward that.”
UPDATED: 03/02/21 2 p.m. Updated for print to include additional reporting from McKenna Schueler and comments from James Shaw Jr.
Support local journalism in these crazy days. Our small but mighty team is working tirelessly to bring you up to the minute news on how Coronavirus is affecting Tampa and surrounding areas. Please consider making a one time or monthly donation to help support our staff. Every little bit helps.
Subscribe to our newsletter and follow @cl_tampabay on Twitter.
This article appears in Mar 4-10, 2021.