State lawmakers and Gov. Ron DeSantis should be working to find ways to bridge the gulfs of fear, anxiety and distrust widening between many Florida law enforcement agencies and the communities they serve.
Instead, DeSantis just signed a pair of measures that could only serve to deepen those dangerous disconnections. HB 601 strips away the ability of civilian review boards to consider complaints about individual officers’ misconduct. SB 184 allows police and other emergency workers to order bystanders to maintain a distance of at least 25 feet or face a charge of “impeding, threatening, or harassing first responders.”
Neither is needed. Supporters of these two bills never managed to identify examples of review boards run amok (though one of the sponsors of HB 601 claimed he knew of multiple cases) or situations where bystanders, or the cellphone video they often record, resulted in an innocent officer being accused of wrongdoing.
When he signed the bills in St. Augustine last week, DeSantis parroted the same speculation of review boards harassing officers who have done nothing wrong. “They’ll set up these things called citizen review boards, usually in these very-tilted-politically jurisdictions,” DeSantis said, according to the Tampa Bay Times. “They’ll stack it with activists, and they’ll just start reviewing things and trying to put people under the gun even if there’s no basis to do that.”
That’s manifestly untrue. In fact, a review of the cases Orlando’s civilian oversight board looked into over the past year reveals that the board almost always exonerated the officers involved — and that officers benefited from broad protection under Florida’s so-called police officers’ bill of rights. Even so, a study released last year by the Leroy Collins Institute found that communities with oversight boards see less disparity in arrests of marginalized populations, fewer clashes between police and the public and safer communities.
HB 601 does allow law enforcement agencies to set up their own citizens’ review boards, but they would be limited to reviewing “policies and procedures” of the departments involved.
SB 184 has its own problems. Restricting bystanders from coming into the vicinity of police officers may be appropriate in some situations — which is why interference with an officer is already a crime in Florida. But this law, which takes effect in January 2025, would allow officers to arrest bystanders who “willfully engage in a course of conduct directed at a first responder which intentionally causes substantial emotional distress in that first responder and serves no legitimate purpose.”
That could allow for a defense when a bystander observes an undeniable case of law enforcement abuse. But it wouldn’t stop officers from threatening people who are trying to capture video of suspected aggression.
Threats won’t solve the problem of police/community distrust. Transparency will.
That’s why smart police administrators promote it — mandating that officers wear body cameras, asking for independent review of questionable conduct, and moving quickly to discipline officers who are proven to have abused the powers of their badge.
They know trust is essential to effective law enforcement — especially in communities where there’s a history of disconnection between police and residents in some neighborhoods.
And trust flourishes in sunlight. Public oversight by civilians who aren’t part of police culture can be critical to building that trust. In their absence, the narrative is too often driven by noisy conflict between attorneys seeking five minutes of news coverage and “back the blue” posturing from politicians and law-enforcement leaders. Giving a panel of average Joes and Josies access to official records, body-cam video and personal testimony from the people involved — and letting them capture their own records of public altercations — can go a long way toward defusing those ideologically driven faceoffs.
The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Krys Fluker, Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. Contact us at insight@orlandosentinel.com
