Police reform compromise reached in the Fla. House
A new police reform bill filed by the Florida House Judiciary Committee walks a line between the demands of protesters and the sway of law enforcement agencies in the state.
The committee bill, supported by both the Florida House Republicans leaders and the Florida Black Legislative Caucus, would establish basic training standards across the state around the use of force, require agencies to report quarterly data about use-of-force encounters and require outside police agencies or a state attorney to conduct an investigation on any case that involves a death or someone wounded from a gunshot.
“It’s a good first step,” said Sen. Randolph Bracy, D-Orlando and a member Florida Black Legislative Caucus. “We were hoping the House would work with us on some of these reforms and they have.”
Rep. Fentrice Driskell, D-Tampa, said that months of negotiations had been ongoing with caucus leaders and the Florida House Republican leadership around these issues.
The new compromise comes after singular bills aimed at these goals and others filed by members of the Florida Black Legislative Caucus in March have languished, worrying community leaders that no real changes would come after a historic protest movement over the summer.
In the meantime, proposals to crack down on unruly protesters and further protect police officers have sailed through various committees and chambers of the statehouse.
While proposals such as statewide body cameras and easyto-access police misconduct registries did not make the new bill, other goals did, such as having a minimum arrest age of 7 years old and a baseline of policies
around how officers use force.
Rather than allowing police departments to have discretion with their policies around use-of-force, the committee bill — if passed — would set standards that would be drilled into new police officers for basic training.
They include instruction on when use of force is justified, de-escalation techniques and chokeholds.
The controversial move won’t be banned, but it would be limited to “circumstances where the officer perceives an immediate threat of serious bodily injury or death to themselves or another person.” Officers also would be trained on how to recognize and appropriately interact with people with substance abuse or mental health issues. Basic training for police officers in the state includes over 700 hours of training, according to a House bill analysis.
Of those hours anywhere from 26 to 152 hours are spent on use-of-force training, 22 to 90 hours are spent on de-escalation and six to 78 hours are spent on mental health and substance abuse training.
If passed, the bill would ensure all agencies receive the same baseline level of training and allow agencies to go above that if they want to.
It also would require agencies to adopt two new policies that they previously did not have to: the duty for officers to intervene when another officer uses too much force, and the duty to provide medical aid if someone is injured by police.
Driskell said these new policies come in the shadow of the trail of former Minnesota police officer Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd. A duty for other officers near Chauvin to intervene while he had his knee on Floyd’s neck might have spared Floyd’s life, she said.
“To me this bill is a great step forward for the state of policing in Florida, so we make sure that nothing like that happens here.”
In addition to policies around use of force, the bill would standardize the way use-of-force encounters are investigated and tracked.
Currently police agencies have no legislative requirements to follow when conducting a use-of-force investigation.
If the committee bill were to pass, it would require any incident that results in death or injury by gunshot to be reviewed by either an outside police agency or a state attorney. The outside review also will have to include a report that is provided to the state attorney.
Incidents like these, as well as any incident that results in “serious bodily injury, death, or discharge of a firearm at a person,” also will be required to be reported on a quarterly basis to a national FBI database.
Since January 2019, FBI has collected data on these use-of-force incidents, but participation is voluntary in Florida and only 67 of the nearly 400 law enforcement agencies in the state have shared data.
The data includes basic information about the incident, the number of officers involved and their names and history, the reason for initial contact, and information about the person who the force was applied to.
While a statewide misconduct registry was not established, the bill would require police agencies to thoroughly investigate new hires, including whether they have failed to disclose any pending investigations against them at other agencies. It would also require agencies to keep employment records for all officers who leave an agency for any reason for a minimum of five years.
According to a bill analysis, previously police departments had discretion as to how long they could keep these records.
Bracy said that members of the Florida Black Legislative Caucus reached out to many police agencies and influential associations while crafting various components of the bill. While he said he knows agencies and associations are supportive of certain aspects, he isn’t yet aware of a consensus around the entire package.
“This is just a compromise between the House and the Senate and the Black Caucus,” he said.
The committee bill will be brought to a discussion on the House floor on Thursday morning by Rep. Cord Byrd, R-Jacksonville, Driskell said. A companion bill in the Senate has yet to be filed, but Bracy said that could happen soon.
For the bill to become law, it would have to get through votes on both the House and Senate before the April 30 legislative session ends. “I think we can pull it off,” Bracy said.
Driskell said the 15-day window is “like a lifetime.”
The bill will be debated amid the finalizing of HB1, a dubbed “anti-protest bill” supported by Gov. Ron DeSantis, Florida Republicans and many police agencies and associations.
On Wednesday morning, Sen. Shevrin Jones, D-Broward, filed an amendment to the bill in honor of LaToya Ratlieff, a protester who was shot by a rubber bullet at a protest in Fort Lauderdale that turned unruly in May 2020.
After an internal investigation was completed by the Fort Lauderdale Police Department, the officer, Eliezer Ramos, was cleared of any wrongdoing.
Jones’ amendment would have created stiffer penalties for officers convicted of battery against peaceful protesters.
“If you hold demonstrators responsible, officers should be held responsible too,” Jones tweeted.
Both amendments failed to pass the Senate by Wednesday evening.