Activists debate how to change local police
Stronger accountability, shifting funds on table
Police forces across the country have faced a reckoning since the Minneapolis death of George Floyd in May, as activists demand fundamental change in a law enforcement establishment they say has fostered police brutality and racial injustice.
But in Central Florida, where activist coalitions have been a ubiquitous presence during street marches and government meetings, a consensus on the movement’s demands has yet to match its passion.
“We’re applying pressure in so many places you have no idea about,” Lawanna Gelzer, a longtime community organizer and one of the most visible figures at the local protests, said at a march last week.
The local movement has included a variety of voices, with demands ranging from stronger accountability measures for police misconduct, to shifting funding
from cops to social programs, to outright “abolition” of law enforcement.
Police agencies, meanwhile, have already made modest policy changes. Orlando police Chief Orlando Rolón this week announced he would explicitly prohibit the use of choke holds and no-knock warrants.
“We need to make sure that our department understands that we have got to mirror the expectations of our citizens and we have to meet those expectations,” he told the City Council. “We‘re committed, moving forward, to making sure that our department understands that the community’s asking for change and we’ll bring about that change.”
Some activists hail the changes as a step in the right direction, but others criticize them as the bare minimum.
“It’s a Trojan horse,” said Orlando activist and journalist T.J. Legacy-Cole, who defined the common goal among local organizers as “to dismantle white supremacy.” “[The changes] give the appearance of progress but, based on what we’ve been seeing and our research, there is no progress.”
Group: Racism a ‘crisis’
As they work to coalesce around a unified message, several groups have already released platforms outlining potential reforms for Central Florida police agencies.
Kira Aiken, an organizer with People 4OH7, said her group created a demand agenda to address the “triple evils” of racism, poverty and militarism. The first demand: For local mayors to declare racism a “public health crisis” and re-allocate funds from the Orlando Police Department and Orange County Sheriff’s Office to address it in Black communities.
The group’s other demands include deputizing civilian representatives trained in de-escalation techniques and social work to embed with officers.
That is being embraced in St. Petersburg, where officials announced Thursday that officers will soon no longer be dispatched to some calls — like those involving mental health crises, neighborly disputes or truant kids — with plainclothes social workers sent in their place.
People 4OH7 and other groups also want Orlando’s Citizens’ Police Review Board to be given the power to subpoena and terminate officers, as well as an independent prosecutor’s office with the power to investigate and prosecute excessive force.
Many of the activists’ demands are likely to face opposition from police unions and other groups that warn of a lawless society should agency budgets be slashed.
“What we should be doing right now is defending the police,” said Gregg Wynn, the first vice president for the Fraternal Order of Police chapter representing Orange County deputies.
He argued taking away money from the OCSO would mean less training, technology and the ability to “attract and retain good officers.”
Wynn said defunding police “makes everyone less safe,” noting that it was law enforcement officers who responded to the Pulse nightclub massacre in 2016 and who regularly risk their lives to protect the community.
Multiple groups have already met with Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer to speak about some of their demands, said Vanessa Keverenge, with Organize Florida.
But Gelzer, during Monday’s City Council meeting, accused Dyer of doing so selectively and deliberately leaving her out of the talks.
“The loudest person is not always the one who is listened to,” said Dyer, a comment which other activists have criticized as sexist. “I think that I and this council have heard from you more than any single resident in the whole city of Orlando.”
Activists have also criticized Dyer for using money from the city’s transportation budget — rather than police funds — to paint a “Black Lives Matter” mural in Pan-African colors on Rosalind Avenue.
“Nobody asked for a mural,” Aiken said. “We asked for defunding [the police].”
Dyer has said the mural idea was urged by city commissioners Regina Hill and Bakari Burns, as well as residents, students and faith leaders, as “an important gesture, a prominent gesture … that in Orlando, Black Lives Matter.”
Activists target budgets
Budgetary priorities are firmly in local activists’ cross-hairs.
Keverenge criticized Demings for supporting $5 million in county funds to help Universal Orlando develop its Epic Universe park, while opposing a rent freeze.
Aiken noted OCSO was allocated $279 million in Orange County’s 2019-2020 budget while the housing and community development division received $43 million.
Demings called the Universal deal sensible, because the resort will replace an aging-but-important wastewater pipe the county would have had to replace later. The mayor said he voted against an effort to put a rent freeze on November’s ballot because there wasn’t enough time to study the plan and get input from all sides.
Some cities have moved forward to defund their police agencies, shifting resources toward other civic services, such as housing or mental health treatment. Minneapolis, where Floyd died after an officer knelt on his neck for nearly 9 minutes, pledged to dismantle its department altogether to be replaced with other public safety models.
On Thursday in Seattle, where protesters were recently ousted from a several-block area they’d repurposed as an autonomous police-free zone, a majority of city council members announced support to reallocate 50% of the police budget to address other community priorities, like poverty.
“Crime doesn’t exist in a vacuum or happen for no reason,” Keverenge said. “… [Demings] is more focused on economic development at every turn and he’s been really clear on that. There’s no compassion in the way he’s leading.”
Other groups have taken more moderate stances. State Rep. Bruce Antone, DOrlando, formed a coalition of pastors, community leaders and former deputies called the Concerned Citizens of Orange County Police Reform and Accountability Task Force, which aims to focus on police agencies’ policies, rather than finances.
“We’ve had all the protests and everybody should continue protesting if they want to, but we’re going to sit down behind the desk, we’re going to meet with folk and we’re just going to keep at this,” Antone told reporters at a press conference Wednesday.
Despite groups’ ideological differences, they share a common goal, Legacy-Cole said: to “perform a complete diagnostic” of law enforcement’s role in the community.
“People might have different ideas for what that looks like,” he said, “but what we’re saying is people like Dyer should sit down with us and give us the opportunity to discuss what can be done to make things better.”
Demands face union resistance
Sheriff John Mina, presenting during a budget workshop Tuesday, credited prior budget and staffing increases for the agency with helping to reduce crime.
“The vast majority of what I’ve been hearing over the time since I’ve been sheriff, in a year and a half, is ‘more law enforcement,’” he added. “It’s only been in the past month that we’ve heard comments about cutting law enforcement.”
The state chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police put out a statement last month that it would “oppose any legislation that would allow civilians to conduct internal investigation of complaints against law enforcement.” It also opposes eliminating qualified immunity, the controversial doctrine that gives wide-ranging protections to law enforcement officers from civil lawsuits.
Wynn, of the OCSO FOP chapter, said empowering a citizen-led panel to address deputy misconduct doesn’t make sense, since the last such body was found unconstitutional in 2009 because its subpoena power conflicted with the sheriff ’s authority.
“We are held accountable for our actions,” Wynn said, explaining that unlike other professions, police have a whole unit of “seasoned, skilled investigators” who review potential misconduct.
The Sheriff’s Office currently has an advisory committee, which reviews policies at the sheriff’s request. OPD’s Citizens’ Police Review Board reviews discipline against officers, but lacks the authority to alter it, launch investigations or compel cops to testify.
CPRB members in recent months have expressed frustration with what they described as lax penalties against officers Jonathan Mills and Robert Schellhorn, both of whom have been accused of racism and other misconduct, as well as with the board’s lack of “teeth.”
‘Until we see action’
Wynn said members of the OCSO union are open to making changes but want to be part of those discussions.
“We’re not the people trying to stay in the way for change and progress,” Wynn said. “There’s always a need for change in law enforcement as in any other profession.”
While the Sheriff ’s Office union pushed back on the wording of a “duty to intervene” policy enacted by Sheriff John Mina in the wake of the Floyd case, it expressed support for the policy itself, which requires deputies to act if they see colleagues using excessive force. And OPD’s union said it backed the changes Rolón announced this week.
Activists, however, remain skeptical that local police agencies can reform themselves.
“They give awards to officers even when they’re known for their abuse,” said Legacy-Cole, referring to Mills, a former OPD patrol officer of the year. “We can’t rely on law enforcement to hold themselves accountable.”
Gelzer, who is part of Antone’s task force, added that any new accountability guidelines have to be viewed skeptically.
“We need to understand the world is watching Orlando, but more so the citizens of Orlando and Central Florida deserve better,” she said. “It’s not about pushing it aside and hoping the community and people will go away.”
In a pair of surveys conducted by their unions after the recent protests, OPD and OCSO personnel overwhelming reported feeling a lack of support from their agency leaders.
“Our members are feeling like the community support has diminished, that the public support, the media support, even [support] within our own agency … over the actions of a very few, small, decimals of a percentage point of officers who commit misconduct,” Wynn said.
But as conversations carry on behind the scenes, activists like Aiken, the People 4OH7 organizer, said the protest movement isn’t planning on letting up the momentum gained in the last month and a half.
“We’ll be in the streets until we see action,” she said.