Florida House leaders and Black Caucus agree on policing reforms; choke holds targeted
After months of negotiations, Republican House leaders and members of the Florida Legislative
Black Caucus reached a compromise on a bill that aims to improve trust in police by addressing use-offorce policies and other police tactics.
The bill, introduced by the House Judiciary Committee, would set statewide use-of-force policies for Florida law enforcement officers, limit the use of controversial choke holds and would require the state to collect data on cases in which police officers use force that results in serious bodily injury or death or shoot at a person.
The proposal (PCB JDC 21-01), scheduled for its first hearing Thursday, comes nearly a year after protests erupted in South Florida and in the United States over the death of George Floyd, who died last year after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for more than nine minutes.
The Black Lives Matter and social justice protests also sparked a backlash from Republican leaders in Florida and Gov. Ron DeSantis, who are pushing through legislation to stiffen punishments for crimes committed during protests that turn violent. That bill (HB 1) was fast-tracked in the House and it appears to be on the verge of passing in the Senate.
Rep. Fentrice Driskell, a Tampa Democrat who led negotiations with House leaders on behalf of the Black Caucus, said the police training bill stands in contrast to HB 1, a top legislative priority for DeSantis that Democrats in both chambers have tried unsuccessfully to amend.
“This is the sort of work product that we come up with when we’re willing to put partisanship aside and try to focus on policy that will help make our communities safer, that will build trust between the law enforcement community and especially communities of color,” Driskell said in an interview Tuesday.
House Judiciary Committee Vice Chair Cord Byrd, a Neptune Beach Republican who will be sponsoring the police reform bill, said the proposal “reflects the work and conversations over many months with and between lawmakers, law enforcement and citizens.”
“Trust in our public institutions is vital, and none more so than trust in our law enforcement,”
Byrd said in a text message. “The bill is a bipartisan effort to promote best law enforcement practices and makes them uniform throughout the state.”
The proposal would set statewide use-of-force policies that would include training on “de-escalation” techniques, require on-duty officers to intervene and end another officer’s excessive use of force when “reasonable,” and would set a minimum statewide standard for the use of choke holds. It would bar the use of choke holds — a controversial neck restraint used by police to subdue suspects — unless an officer “perceives an immediate threat of serious bodily injury or death to themselves or another person.”
If an agency wants to be more restrictive, the bill would allow it, Byrd said.
“Limiting the use of choke holds and combined with the duty to intervene
... to me it’s like a miracle,” said Driskell, a Harvardtrained attorney. “It’s nothing short of a miracle.”
The choke hold language in the House bill differs from a Senate bill that would bar the practice except in a “deadly force situation.”
Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chairman
Jason Pizzo, D-Miami, is sponsoring the proposal, which is on its last committee stop. Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle helped craft the proposal, which includes other differences in the statewide standards of police training. That proposal is backed by the Miami-Dade Association of Chiefs of Police and the South Florida Police Benevolent Association.
Miami-Dade police, the largest law enforcement agency in the Southeastern United States, banned choke holds last June in the wake of Floyd’s death. At the time, Police Director Alfredo Ramirez said he decided to do away with the policy after speaking with experts and community members, many of whom considered the practice dangerous and outdated.