At least 15 civilian review boards across Florida, which review investigations of potential law enforcement misconduct after they’re completed, have dissolved or temporarily ceased operations after a new law targeting the panels took effect.
The law assures that only law enforcement agencies will investigate reports of misconduct by law enforcement officers. It blocks outside civilian review boards from performing oversight in such investigations, moves civilian panels under the control of Florida police chiefs and sheriffs, and requires that at least one panelist must be a retired law enforcement officer.
The move by Florida's GOP-controlled Legislature, which took effect July 1, was the latest effort to show its support for law enforcement. Lawmakers in recent years have forced homeowners' associations to allow police cruisers in driveways, banned vaccination COVID-19 requirements for cops and allowed police to arrest anyone who tries to record them from less than 25 feet away.
Backed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, the law was a major blow to the civilian review panels. Oversight advocates warned it will damage community-police relations and diminish trust in law enforcement. The measure has dissolved civilian boards in major cities, including Miami, Tallahassee, St. Petersburg, Orlando and Tampa.
Supporters of the law said it makes misconduct investigations consistent by removing the public’s involvement, and said different municipalities have different approaches. It was also intended to avoid discouraging applicants from working at police departments or sheriff’s offices that have civilian review boards. The law does not eliminate or restrict other, official means of investigating law enforcement misconduct, according to an analysis presented to lawmakers.
Steve Zona, the past president of the Florida State Fraternal Order of Police, defended the closures of the civilian boards and said the goal of the law was to eliminate them altogether. He called the panels partisan and said they had no place in the criminal justice system.
Zona also said he believes any review boards, including new boards established by law enforcement, are useless. He said boards exist only to “appease the community and make them think something is being done.”
There were at least 20 city and county review boards previously active before the law took effect as identified by Fresh Take Florida, a news service of the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications. Of those, only five remain operational, according to interviews with dozens of city and board officials across the state and a review of city documents.
Rep. Wyman Duggan, R-Jacksonville, said his legislation was meant to protect law enforcement by eliminating existing boards, ensuring that investigations of misconduct would take place in regulated forums with standardized procedures.
“I do not see the benefit of a forum where members, who may have no qualifications or expertise, have an open-ended process with no standards to subject an officer to an endless process of public scrutiny,” he said during a legislative hearing in January.
Duggan, who will be House speaker pro tempore and chair of the powerful Ways and Means Committee for Florida’s upcoming legislative session, did not respond to repeated efforts, including phone calls and emails over two weeks, to discuss the closures.
Randy Grice, the former chair of the now-defunct North Miami Citizens Investigative Board, said his board had fulfilled an important function in the community: giving residents an impartial way to review uncomfortable encounters with law enforcement.
“Citizens are not satisfied,” Grice said. “Frankly, they're confused.”
Grice said the board was fair and never out to get any officers, adding that it provided an impartial forum for community members to report troubling interactions with those in power. Once, Grice said, his board was able to help resolve an internal racial profiling accusation made by a sergeant against another officer of the North Miami Police Department. The board also recognized officers who went above and beyond the call of duty.
The closures will affect community-police relations across Florida, according to the executive director of the Indianapolis-based National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement, Cameron McEllhiney. She said civilian review boards play a number of important functions, such as legitimizing the work of law enforcement and building trust within the communities.
“Whatever trust has built up is gonna start to slide back,” she said.
A widely cited 2022 study by the LeRoy Collins Institute at Florida State University, which explored the relationship between civilian review boards and racial dynamics in Florida, found a reduction in Black arrest rates in cities with civilian review boards. According to the study, independent oversight boards seem to boost law enforcement transparency, resulting in “a net positive for both officers and civilians.”
The new law resulted in the closure of Florida’s most prominent civilian review board, the City of Miami’s Civilian Investigative Panel. The city cut off its funding in August because of the law and the panel was dissolved in September. In a statement, the city said it cannot fund a board “whose main purpose and duties are contrary to Florida Statutes.”
Rodney Jacobs Jr., who had served as chair of the board, said he still receives three or four calls each week from citizens who want to bring issues to the board. All he can do now, he said, is direct them to report their issues to local police departments.
Jacobs said the goal of the Miami board, and all civilian review boards, is to build trust. He added while the civilian panel itself couldn’t solve all police-community relationship issues, the trust it created would.
“It was never about sticking it to the police officers,” Jacobs said. “I have two kids. I want to raise them in a city where we don’t need police accountability or police oversight because they do the right thing all the time.”
Miami-Dade County’s review board, the Independent Civilian Panel, was also dissolved as a result of the law. Former executive director Ursula Price said she wasn’t surprised to hear about the other closures across the state.
In April, the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida told community advocates and city attorneys in a memo that civilian review boards should not be affected by the new law because they do not engage in investigation or oversight.
Commenting on completed internal affairs reports or use of force reports – as the boards had been doing – does not meet statutory definitions of investigation or oversight, which are now barred, said James Shaw, an attorney with the Florida ACLU, who co-authored the memo. He said the phrasing of the law is “a bunch of squishy words” that don’t withstand legal scrutiny.
City attorneys are not required to close civilian review boards, Shaw said – but they are acting as if the law forces their hand.
Speaking to the Tampa City Council in June, City Attorney Andrea Zelman took a different view and said reviewing closed investigations was, in fact, barred by the new law. Such reviews are considered a form of “oversight,” which the new law prohibits.
“We haven’t talked to anyone in the state who feels other than we do,” Zelman said in support of her recommendation to dissolve its civilian review board. “We really have no choice.”
The Key West Citizen Review Board is one of a handful in Florida that remains active. Robert Cintron, the board’s independent attorney, said the city has a great relationship with its police department.
“Their internal affairs officer comes to every one of the meetings and is very involved with the board,” he said.
Other boards that have remained operational identified by Fresh Take Florida are in Ormond Beach, south of St. Augustine; Lakeland, east of Tampa; Indian River County, northeast of Okeechobee; and Gainesville.
McEllhiney, of the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement, said civilian oversight boards ballooned in popularity after the killing of George Floyd in 2020, which sparked national protests against police brutality and led to the murder conviction of one officer and three others for violating Floyd’s civil rights.
In recent years, McEllhiney said she’s seen partisan backlash to the growth of civilian oversight in Arizona, Tennessee, Texas and Utah – but no pushback has been as far-reaching as in Florida, where the Senate passed the law unanimously. In the House, 28 lawmakers voted against it.
Carlos Valdes was the chair of Tampa’s Citizens Review Board and is currently a member of Tampa Police Department’s Chief’s Advisory Panel, which was established under the new law.
Unlike Tampa’s now-dissolved Citizens Review Board, Valdes said the new panel’s meetings are not recorded, it meets quarterly instead of monthly, and the board evaluates the effectiveness of departmental policies instead of reviewing closed internal affairs investigations.
He said had been concerned the new board’s meetings might be a “dog and pony show,” but after the group’s first meeting, Valdes said he feels more optimistic about Tampa Police Department’s intentions. Still, he added he laments the fact the new board serves a different purpose than the civilian review board.
Valdes said he wishes police would understand that reviewing closed internal affairs reports is a matter of building trust, not political sniping or anti-police activism.
The former chair of Fort Myers’ now-defunct civilian review board, Steven Brown-Cestero, said he’s built enough trust with the city’s police department that he expects its oversight board to operate ethically. However, he said he’s concerned for other municipalities where law enforcement may be less inclined to appoint a fair board.
“Who guards the guards?” Brown-Cestero said. “There is nobody.”
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This story was produced by Fresh Take Florida, a news service of the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications. The reporter can be reached at mcupelli@ufl.edu.
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