Florida discards nuisance police oversight panels

Had Arthur McDuffie survived the gang attack that left him with five skull fractures, he might have spoken of the need for the kind of civilian oversight panels the Florida Legislature has sabotaged.

McDuffie was murdered by a racist mob. The mob was a rabble of cops.

In the predawn darkness, Dec. 17, 1979, the 33-year-old Black insurance executive raced through Miami on a borrowed Kawasaki motorcycle with an armada of police cruisers in pursuit. A Black man trying to outrun South Florida cops in 1979 was the very definition of recklessness.

After an eight minute chase, McDuffie stopped near a freeway off-ramp and surrendered. Police shoved the former Marine lance corporal onto the pavement and cuffed his hands behind his back.

Then came the savagery. At least six police officers kicked McDuffie and bludgeoned him with batons and Kel-Lite flashlights. They broke both legs. Another cop drove a squad car over the Kawasaki to support a mendacious police report attributing McDuffie’s injuries to a motorcycle mishap.

“He looked like somebody painted his face with a can of red paint,” one witness told investigators. “Everybody was beating this guy upside his head.”

Another witness testified that the scene “looked like a bunch of animals fighting for meat.”

Four days later, the comatose McDuffie died from brain trauma, his head “shattered like an egg,” according to the county medical examiner.

That might have been that, just another mundane traffic mishap, had not the Miami Herald’s legendary crime reporter Edna Buchanan dug out the truth. Four policemen went on trial in Tampa for the killings (a fifth cop’s case was thrown out before trial), and an all-white, all-male jury in Tampa set them free.

Reaction to the inexplicable acquittals consumed Miami. During three days of arson and violence, 18 people were killed, 370 were injured and 787 were arrested. So many businesses were set aflame that black plumes of smoke blanketed the cityscape.

The 1980 riot provided unforgettable proof that Florida cities, not just Miami, need independent, racially diverse oversight to ease the rancor between cops and the disaffected enclaves they police. By 2024, the unforgettable was forgotten.

Just over a week ago, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation that erased the “independent” from independent oversight. Under House Bill 601, police agencies essentially oversee themselves.

After July 1, only police chiefs and county sheriffs — and no one else — decide which of their buddies will sit on oversight panels. “You have review boards, that’s fine, but it’s got to be done in ways where you have the sheriff or chief of police appointing people,” the governor said as he signed the legislation in St. Augustine. “It can’t be people [who] have an agenda.”

Not that who-gets-appointed-by-whom much matters, given that HB 601 also bars the panels from investigating police misconduct or excessive force allegations. The measure “puts the kibosh on these extrajudicial investigations against law enforcement,” the governor said, describing the previous boards as “stacked with activists.”

DeSantis, of course, would prefer police review boards that wouldn’t throw a hissy fit if his troopers happened to introduce their batons and flashlights to BLM demonstrators. And wouldn’t that look grand on Fox News?

Miami-Dade County’s review panel functioned for three decades, until it was defunded during the 2009 budget crisis. But 21 Florida cities, including Fort Lauderdale, Miami, West Palm Beach, Tampa, St. Petersburg and Delray Beach have created similar oversight committees to allay the miscommunication, mistrust and mistreatment that ruin police-community relationships.

Last year, Miami-Dade County reinstituted its defunct Independent Civilian Panel to review police actions — just in time to be neutered by HB 601.

Nationally, more than 200 cities have appointed police review boards, including Los Angeles, Chicago, Kansas City and Detroit, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. But Florida’s police unions and county sheriffs, most of whom support the governor, prefer the DeSantis style of see-no-evil oversight.

Any doubts about whether HB 601 was concocted as a sop to his law enforcement buddies were allayed by a sweet little addendum that raised sheriffs’ annual salaries by $5,000.

The bill was another legislative exercise in doing what the legislature does best, which is to preempt any notion that local governments should govern local people. HB 601 specifies that the state has wrested jurisdiction over this matter from “an authority, a board, a branch, a bureau, a city, a commission, a consolidated government, a county, a department, a district, an institution, a metropolitan government, a municipality, an office, an officer, a public corporation, a town or a village.”

Next, they’ll be adding homeroom monitors and school crossing guards to the Legislature’s growing list of preempted losers.

DeSantis also signed legislation that day prohibiting civilians from violating a 25-foot buffer around cops (and other first responders) doing cop stuff.

Civilians can be such a nuisance.