The debate (cough, power struggle) continues to rage between Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn and City Council over a proposed panel aimed at policing the police.
There have been developments in the stalemate between the two parties, namely some concessions on the part of the council on the power the board would have (it gave up on its demand that the panel have subpoena power). And the fact that Buckhorn and City Council Chair Frank Reddick even met, like, in the same room, last week, seemed like an achievement.
Outside City Hall Wednesday afternoon, Reddick renewed calls for the mayor to allow the council more of a say in the makeup of the board.
“It's coming to a point where we have to make a decision,” Reddick said. “And tomorrow we will discuss this again.”
At its 5:30 meeting Thursday, the council will discuss whether to advance an ordinance establishing a civilian review board that includes some of the council's terms.
“We all know that the citizens of this community have been pushing the council members to do the right thing," Reddick said. "We're hoping we can do the right thing. The community elected us to represent them. The community elected us to be their voice for them. Now it's time that we show the citizens of this county and this city that it's time to do what the community asked us to do. And that we hope to move forward with this recommendation.”
At issue is how many people the council and mayor can each appoint to the board, which is obviously important, given the astonishingly wide variability of tone conversations a civilian review board can potentially take.
“We cannot rely solely on internal investigations where a party to a conflict is solely responsible for its investigation,” said Laila Abdelaziz, legislative affairs director with the Council on American Islamic Relations.
Buckhorn wants the panel to consist of nine regular members, seven of which he would appoint and two that'd be appointed by the council. There'd also be two alternate members, both Buckhorn appointees as well.
Reddick, meanwhile, wants an 11-member board, seven of which the council would appoint and four the mayor would appoint. Reddick then expanded the number to seven council appointees and eight mayoral appointees, to no avail, Reddick said, because the mayor thought it would be “too large of a board.”
So far, Buckhorn has only been willing to give up one appointee to the council.
“I think, and I still stand firm, that I want each member of the council to appoint one member to the board,” Reddick said.”I will not back down from seven members appointed by the board.”
Though the Buckhorn-Reddick summit was surprising, its outcome was not:
“We had a good meeting,” Reddick said. “We didn't agree on how the makeup of the board should be. The mayor had his understanding, I have my understanding and we couldn't come to a compromise. I understand that, but we did have an open dialogue. We both agreed to continue to talk about this.”
The council will iron out the details of an ordinance establishing a civilian review board at the meeting, which would include the number of members the council gets to appoint versus that of the mayor.
If the mayor doesn't like it, he can veto it.
The council could (and probably would) then override his veto.
But even if they do that, the mayor's executive order establishing his version of the civilian review board would take precedence over the one the council passed, Reddick conceded.
For Andrew Joseph, Jr., whose son died last year while attempting to cross I-4 after police ejected him from the Florida State Fair, there is too much at stake to let that happen, he said at Wedneday's press conference.
“We need an independent board that's allowed to go out and investigate these incidents themselves and compare it to what the police have investigated and make a commonsense decision on that,” he said. “Where there's smoke, most times there's fire. And we see the smoke with the stops of the bicycles...we see the smoke with the 14-year-old boy who was ejected from the fair, dead on the interstate. So there's enough smoke here in Tampa to know there's a fire.”
A spokeswoman for the mayor declined to comment on the issue.
