Local civilian oversight of policing in Miami-Dade County and elsewhere in Florida is in trouble, now that a bill prohibiting it is advancing through the state Legislature.
HB 601 was approved by both the Florida House and Senate in the past two weeks, but a March 1 Senate amendment caused it to return to the House this week for one final approval before it heads to the desk of Gov. Ron DeSantis for signature.
If passed, the bill would stop local municipalities or counties from establishing any form of oversight to investigate police misconduct. This would effectively abolish Miami’s Civilian Investigative Panel, which was formed in 2002, and the county’s Independent Civilian Panel (ICP), which just started reviewing cases after being established in 2020.
ICP executive director Ursula Price is concerned that even some of the panel’s most basic recommendations will not be implemented before the bill takes effect in July.
So far, the panel has entered into an agreement with the Miami-Dade Police Department to help change the way it processes and investigates complaints, as well as to allow the panel’s staff to teach at the department’s police academy. Price doubts that either one will have time to take effect in the remaining four months before oversight panels in Florida are potentially eradicated. Due to a series of delays that chewed up the better part of three years since the ICP was created, the real work is only now beginning.
Price and the ICP have traveled to Tallahassee in an attempt to educate legislators on the importance of their work to no avail. The Florida Senate unanimously approved the bill last Friday, revealing a clear distaste for independent police oversight in the state across party lines.
Still, there may be an opportunity for existing panels to be transformed rather than completely dismantled.
“It’s a question of what this local jurisdiction builds the political will to pass,” said Price, “but there are a number of different ways that you can still have civilian engagement and police accountability without violating the law as it seems to be written right now.”
Though the bill bans external investigations of misconduct, Price says there are still ways for independent bodies to play a role in transforming how a police department functions more generally. That could include reporting to a local legislative body with recommendations, negotiating with law enforcement executives directly or merely publishing findings for the public to act upon on its own accord.
During the March 1 hearing, however, Sen. Jason Pizzo said that it is the responsibility of elected officials to hold hired law enforcement executives accountable on their own. He believes independent review panels are just a way for politicians to deflect that responsibility elsewhere.
Price, for one, disagrees.
“Anyone who paid attention to history can see it is obvious that elected officials alone aren’t enough to preserve people’s rights when it comes to the system of policing we’ve constructed in this country,” she said. “If you really think that your local county commissioner is the one who’s going to be able to fix it, then why hasn’t that happened already?”
She also noted that, though changes can’t always be forced, boards designated specifically for police oversight are often the ones that can inform the public of what’s going right and wrong with policing in the first place.
“When people know, they expect better, and I point out that local officials aren’t really equipped to bring transparency to policing because it takes a lot of time to turn all that data into meaning,” she said.
The amended bill would allow a sheriff to create an internal board to review policy and procedure. Miami-Dade County will elect its first sheriff in nearly six decades this November, which raises another concern for Price.
“The police department is transitioning to a sheriff’s office, and there is, to my knowledge, no one responsible for making sure that transition goes smoothly for civilians,” Price said. “I believe that’s a role my office could play, not just in answering questions but in being the observer of the system.”
The office of the sheriff was abolished in Miami-Dade County in the 1960s due to rampant corruption and is now being reinstalled by a statewide constitutional amendment approved by voters in 2018. There are currently 17 candidates vying for the seat.