Thread by @JamesShawJr

It's necessary to correct the record a little bit about yesterday's Tampa City Council meeting about the #TampaCRB and the bizarre press conference that followed.

Tampa City Council began re-examining the #TampaCRB shortly after the murder of George Floyd.

The current CRB was formed in 2015 after then-mayor Bob Buckhorn short-circuited an earlier effort to create a CRB by issuing an executive order purporting to create one, and City Council followed by enacting an ordinance that tracks the executive order word-for-word.

So, does the current CRB exist pursuant to the ordinance or pursuant to the executive order? It depends whom you ask, but the only honest answer is that nobody knows. It's a moot question; either way the result is the same.

Shortly after City Council began considering an update to the CRB ordinance, the Mayor's Office asked the City Attorney's Office to circulate a draft ordinance containing several suggestions for the draft ordinance.

Local stakeholders weighed in on it. The Police Benevolent Association (the union representing Tampa police) wanted things removed. The local ACLU chapter wanted things added.

Last February, the City Attorney's Office presented City Council with a draft ordinance. There were things that City Council didn't like about it. For one, it only allowed the CRB to review cases where certain discipline was imposed, but not where it wasn't.

That was unacceptable. For instance, if George Floyd had been killed in Tampa and the internal-affairs investigation ended with a determination that Derek Chauvin had done nothing wrong, the CRB woludn't have been able to review it (because no discipline was imposed).

Council was also unhappy with the way members would be appointed. Currently, the Mayor appoints 6 members and Council appoints 5. Giving 1 person the power to appoint a majority makes it easy to nullify the CRB; too easy to find six people who #BackTheBlue no matter what they do.

@CharlieFrago just making sure you're tuned into this thread, man. You too, @SheCarriesOn and @JasmineStylesTV.

The February proposal did nothing except specify that one of the Mayor's six would be a member of the local NAACP Chapter. So, the Mayor would have five, City Council five, and the eleventh member would be the NAACP designee.

To put this in context, in Naples, Daytona Beach, and Gainesville, their city councils appoint ALL of the members. In Miami, city commissioners appoint 10, the mayor gets 2, and the police chief gets one. In Ft. Myers, city council gets 7 and the mayor gets 1.

Tampa's was set up with the Mayor appointing a majority because Bob Buckhorn wanted to make sure he controlled it. It made the CRB a sockpuppet controlled by the Mayor's office. For CRBs to have credibility with the public, they need to be independent. Tampa's isn't.

You too @EmeraldMorrow. I'm doing my best to correct the record. Please read this thread.

In the end, City Council was only willing to take one appointment from the Mayor in the new draft ordinance. So, instead of Mayor-5, Council-5, NAACP-1, it would be Mayor-4 (1 of whom is NAACP) and Council-7.
Just. One. Appointment.

City Council sent the February draft ordinance back to the City Attorney's Office and asked to re-draft the appointment part to transfer one appointment from the Mayor to Council and fix the part that said the CRB could only review cases where discipline was imposed.

On May 16, 2021 (four days before yesterday's meeting), the City Attorney sent City Council a draft ordinance that did what was asked. Nothing was said about any problems with it. Everything in that draft was the result of a year's worth of back and forth between stakeholders.

There were some other issues that were more controversial. Namely, civilian-review panels are in the strange position of investigating complaints and uncovering information that can have the effect of making the city liable for an officer's misconduct.

Conversely, the City Attorney's Office is charged, in part, with protecting the City from civil liability. So, an attorney with the City Attorney's Office has an inherent conflict of interest and can't effectively represent the CRB.

City Council wanted the CRB to have its own independent attorney, but the City Attorney advised them that the Charter forbids this.

There's no such legal technicality. Other boards (e.g. the Civil Service Board) have their own independent attorney, but it's a Tampa tradition to invent legal technicalities and lay them on City Council whenever they're about to do something the Mayor doesn't want them to do.

The other thing was that some of the Council members wanted the CRB to have subpoena power like the civilian review boards of Miami, Key West, and Broward County have.

There's a lot of misinformation about subpoena power. It's illegal in Florida for a CRB to subpoena a cop facing discipline. Anyone who tells you that that's a concern is either lying to you or is misinformed about Florida law. Either way, they're not worth listening to.

When @JaneCastor and @ChiefDugan keep saying that City Council wants to give "unlimited" or "broad" supoena powers to the CRB, they're making that up. A law called the "Law Enforcement Officers Bill of Rights" already exempts officers facing discipline from CRB subpoenas.

Subpoenas are part of every court case. If someone is suing you for a dollar, your lawyer can issue subpoenas to witnesses to testify in court about anything relevant to whether you owe that dollar. It's not a big deal. Lots of CRBs across the country can issue them.

There's no such thing as "unlimited" subpoena power. Witnesses can ask a judge to quash or narrow them if they think they've received a subpoena that's too broad. I'm not sure why Castor & Dugan are so obsessed with it. I honestly think it's the word "power" that bothers them.

So, in that trademark Tampa move, the City Attorney told City Council that they just don't have the legal authority to vest a board with subpoena power.

But they do. They've given it by ordinance to the Human Rights Board and to the Code Enforcement Board. It's only when we're talking about oversight over police that suddenly all these legal technicalities come out.

City Council itself can issue subpoenas. So can the aforementioned Code Enforcement Board and the Human Rights Board. Congress can issue them. So can the Florida Legislature.

Basically, if a government body needs to make decisions based on information, it needs to have the ability to compel people to provide it with the information it needs. Subject, of course, to privileges (e.g. 5th Amendment, attorney-client) & judicial protection from any abuse.

For instance, subpoenas can be issued by the Florida Commission of Human Relations, the Division of Florida Condominiums, Timeshares, and Mobile Homes of the Department of Business and Professional Regulation, the Agency for Healthcare Administration...

...the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, the Division of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco of the Department of Business and Professional Regulation, the Division of Elections, the Office of Insurance Regulation...

...the Commission on Ethics, the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, the Financial Services Commission, the Chief Financial Officer...there's dozens more...basically anyone who needs to gather information in order to make decisions.

In reality, subpoenas are rarely issued. Most people voluntarily comply. Like, if your surveillance camera recorded footage of a serious crime and the police needed it for their investigation, you'd just give it to them if they asked you for it, right? You're a good citizen.

And even for the one jerk who would say, "How much you willing to pay me for it?" or "Whatcha gonna do about it if I don't?" just having the ability to subpoena the thing is usually enough for him to give it up. There's no sense in making them send a subpoena.

But, what if the only person with footage of George Floyd's murder was a business owner with a thin-blue-line flag and paints #BorkTheBlup on city streets without permits in his spare time and who misguidedly believes that refusing to let us see the tape is a way to #BackTheBlue?

I can't think of any good reason why the CRB shouldn't be allowed to subpoena a tape like that. Or an eyewitness to an incident to testify about what she witnessed. There isn't one. If it were a civil lawsuit, even a lawsuit over a dollar, it could be subpoenaed, so why not here?

If you ask @JaneCastor or @ChiefDugan, they won't be able to give you a valid reason that the CRB shouldn't be able to subpoena recordings like that, either. So they exaggerate and say "unlimited" or pretend that cops could be subpoenaed. (They can't.) That's all they've got.

Anyway, back to City Council, the City Attorney incorrectly told them that they didn't have the power to give CRB an independent attorney (though they gave one to the Civil Service Board) or subpoena power (though they gave it to the Human Rights Board).

Plus, there's politics here. Pretending to believe that they don't have the power is a great cover story for councilmembers who want to do the right thing but want *more* to refrain from displeasing the Mayor. They can say, "Gosh, I'd like to, but City Attorney says I can't."

So, in a brilliant move, they talked about punting the question to the voters as Charter amendment. That ends the City Attorney's argument that the Charter precludes this ("Not anymore!") and protects them from Mayor's wrath ("It wasn't me, Mayor; it was those pesky voters!").

But they were too scared to put even subpoena power to the voters. In February, they voted only to ask their attorneys to prepare a referendum for a Charter amendment that would allow the CRB to have its own independent attorney. That's it. Nothing about subpoena power.

So, to summarize, as of February, the CRB reform had been split into two tracks. There was an ordinance full of compromises that all of the stakeholders could live with. Independent counsel was set to go to the voters as a Charter amendment. Subpoena power was dead, a non-issue.

I still can't figure out why Mayor has such a problem with an independent attorney. What's the big deal? It's not very expensive to have a part-time attorney like the Civil Service Board has. I really think it's because the Mayor wouldn't be able to control the attorney.

Anyway, this brings us to May 2021. Two things happened before the meeting. On 5/14 the City Council Attorney (it has its own attorney) asked for another 60-90 days to draft the Charter-referendum language because he's in discussions with the City Attorney about the details.

Second, on May 16, the City Attorney sent the City Council a new draft ordinance. It looked a lot like the February draft except City Council had 7 appointments (instead of 5) and the CRB's authority wasn't restricted only to cases where discipline was imposed. That's it.

Nothing was said about any problems with it. There was no memo that said anything like, "Here's what you asked for, but it's not legal for you to pass this" or anything like that.

Then there's yesterday's City Council meeting. I'd love to know the backstory behind the out-of-left-field attempt to put the genie back into the bottle, but with no advanced warning, the City Attorney told City Council that the newly drafted ordinance would be illegal.

Again, this came with a custom-made legal problem. This time, it was supposedly that the Charter says they can only enact ordinances affecting the police if they had the Mayor's permission, and Mayor doesn't like the May draft, only the February draft. They knew this was hogwash.

Again, subpoena power was off the menu at this point. As to independent counsel, they scheduled a meeting in February to talk about what that would look like on the ballot. It wouldn't have delayed anything; the election date stays the same.

But Chief Dugan showed up and demanded that they decide, once and for all, that the CRB could never have subpoena power and could never have its own attorney. He said that he'd go the the Mayor to get his way if they didn't give it to him.

The story was that police officers were sad that the CRB might one day get subpoena power, and they want "closure." It's unclear whether anyone ever explained to these sad officers that the law already exempts them from the subpoenas. Maybe they're all upset over nothing.

At least, I *hope* it's that. If what they're concerned about is the CRB's ability to uncover the truth when an internal affairs report relies on falsehoods to relieve an officer of responsibility for wrongdoing, that's an alarming thing for them to be upset about, isn't it?

Anyway, it was a ridiculous request because Council couldn't have granted it even if they wanted to. These seven won't always be City Council. They can't stop future Councilmembers from changing the CRB ordinance again. There's a reason we don't chisel laws into stone anymore.

And I think City Council was also starting to realize that the Mayor, Police, and PBA weren't really concerned about what the CRB did and didn't need to do its job. They just wanted the weakest CRB possible. This is where City Council went wrong in 2015; it was set up to fail.

And the point was never going to come where the PBA and TPD and Mayor said, "Ok, it's finally weak enough that you can pass it and we won't object." The plan was to cry "It's not weak enough!" all the way until City Council voted on it, which is what City Council finally did.

Again, subpoena power was not in the ordinance. Subpoena power was not in the ordinance. Subpoena power was not in the ordinance. Subpoena power was not in the ordinance. Subpoena power was not in the ordinance. Subpoena power was not in the ordinance. Subpoena power...got it?

What City Council voted on was the May 16 draft provided by the City Attorney. Without changing a word. And that was an ordinance full of things everyone could live with, resulting from months of Council listening to complaints from Mayor, PBA, and TPD and mostly caving to them.

Then, again out of left field, @ChiefDugan & @JaneCastor hold a press conference, slamming Council for delaying the process so long (by listening to them for the last several months). As a result of these delays, they claimed, the Mayor would be instituting changes immediately.

And what are the changes? They didn't know. Here, watch it for yourself and tell me if you can point to one thing that's not already in the draft ordinance passed yesterday. facebook.com/watch/live/?v=…

If you remove all the discussions about the laundry program and the softball games (not substitutes for oversight), they only referenced (1) an interview panel, (2) a complaint-tracking system, and (3) assigning a lawyer from the City Attorney's Office to help the CRB.

^ All of that was already in the proposed ordinance that City Council voted to advance on May 20. There was nothing new.

It's unclear exactly how they're going to "move forward with these particular changes to the CRB as of now." It seems that maybe she's going to sign an executive order like Buckhorn did? Remains to be seen what exactly they're talking about.

They did, however, spend a lot of time talking about how much they didn't want the CRB to have subpoena power or to have its own attorney. They really couldn't explain why. They pretended they didn't want "unlimited" subpoena power and that the lawyer would be too expensive.

Again, they're making this up about subpoena power. It's not in the ordinance that they just passed. It's also not one of the things they decided they would discuss in February when they talk about asking the voters to amend the charter. That's solely about independent counsel.

In other words, they pretended that they had to act on an emergency basis to stop City Council from doing something that they weren't even thinking about doing. Also that City Council, which had just acted, was taking too long to act (by listening to their endless "concerns").

A reporter asked how whatever she's doing would affect the ordinance that City Council is about to vote for a second reading on June 17. She said that their CRB would be "ineffective" and that she and the police would only cooperate with her CRB, not theirs. I'm serious.

Really, the only thing that City Council left for a future day was the issue of independent counsel, which again I can't see why that's a big deal to them. Everything else that they'd been working on was in the draft ordinance that they voted on yesterday w/ second reading 6/17.

A reporter asked what the problem was, and Mayor gave a classic response. She said that City Council shouldn't punt these decisions to voters instead of making the decisions themselves, but also that they don't have the power to make these decisions themselves; she does. Really.

The whole thing was a stunt. They didn't propose *anything* that wasn't already in the ordinance that Council will vote for second reading on June 17. They said they were upset about independent counsel and subpoena power, but neither thing was in the ordinance. Makes no sense.

If you listen to the press conference, it's pretty clear that there were two things driving them:
1. Subpoena power and independent counsel. These aren't in the ordinance, but they wanted Council to promise that no one would ever add them, which isn't something Council could do.

2. They're mad that they Council rejected their leash. Today, they can control the CRB by appointing a majority of its members and controlling its agenda. They wanted Council to agree to make only the changes that they pre-authorized and not to make any decisions on their own.

^That's the real reason. They're afraid of an *independent* CRB that they don't have absolute control over. Why? That's a good question. Other cities have independent CRBs and haven't been burned down, so what are they so afraid of? No one is asking them that.

They held the press conference at 4:30pm so that the media would have juuuust enough time to put the story together but not enough time to fact-check it.

It worked, though. @10TampaBay @AngelinaWTSP repeated their narrative as fact, without mentioning that City Council approved first reading of an ordinance and incorrectly reporting that Council was trying to give the CRB subpoena power. wtsp.com/article/news/l…

@MitchEPerry's story on @BN9 was more accurate, noting that the ordinance was passed. baynews9.com/fl/tampa/news/…

And @cl_tampabay has a great overview. cltampa.com/news-views/loc…

But, really, nobody told the whole story of what's actually going on, and the people of Tampa deserve to know. So, here it all is on twitter.

What really happened is that Councilman @gudes490 started this process shortly after George Floyd's murder to make the CRB what it was supposed to have been in the first place: a body that can give the citizens confidence in their police by independently reviewing complaints.

And instead of working with the process, the PBA panicked. The CRB can't fire anybody or discipline anybody or even ask police any questions, but they panicked anyway. They hired lawyers and commissioned phony surveys and rounded up misinformed people to speak at meetings.

The Mayor and TPD also panicked because they didn't trust the legislative process unless they had absolute control over it. They didn't trust the CRB unless they had absolute control over it. As soon as it felt like they didn't hold all the leashes, they held a tantrum presser.

It's like the people who hated "Obamacare" but didn't oppose any particular part of it; they just didn't trust anything that wasn't their idea.

The whole thing could have been wrapped up long ago. That much is true. But it's largely because of them and their paranoid concerns about every last detail, and Council's patient receiving of their concerns, that the changes aren't final already.

There's nothing in the ordinance that Council just approved that they have any valid complaints about. It looks just like every other municipality's CRB, perhaps even a little bit weaker.

Sure, every police department would like it if they could do whatever they want with no questions asked, but most all of them realize that that's not realistic. There's going to be some scrutiny, just like every other profession has. Most departments accept that reality.

But Tampa...in 2015 the then-president of the TBA made the throat-slash gesture at the Council chairman just for letting the super-weak CRB get created at all. They threatened City Council members with lawsuits if they voted for it. Said they would end their careers.

No idea how much they've spent this time on lawyers, polls, PR...and why? Because they don't want it to have an independent attorney? Because they want Tampa's mayor to have the most appointments of any mayor in Florida? There's nothing there that's not in other cities' CRBs.

It's still my hope that people can cool down and look at this more rationally that they have been. The Mayor's 4 appointments is still 2 more than Miami's mayor gets, 3 more than Ft. Myers's, and 4 more than Naples's, Daytona Beach's, and Gainesville's. It's no hill to die on.

Ditto for the CRB's mission scope. Tampa's ordinance now looks like every other city's ordinance. There's no trophy for having the weakest CRB in Florida, and there's no shame in having one that looks like everyone else's. I don't understand why all the fuss.

And is it really worth spending the Mayor's political capital, the PBA's actual money, and the Police Chief's credibility on wanting the CRB's lawyer to be an employee of the City Attorney's Office instead of an independent attorney? Is that really important enough for all this?

This could get done smoothly, and in a way that Tampa could be proud of, if we could just remove the egos and emotions from it and if everyone could trust everyone else's good faith.

Nobody has it out for police officers. We love police officers. We love doctors, too, but we still want there to be boards that review complaints about them.

I gotta say, though, we really like it when police officers show us that they can assess threats accurately. We really like mayors and union presidents who are good at prioritizing. Here's an opportunity to show the people you lead that they can be confident in your judgment.

It sure would be great if we could wait for June 17, let the ordinance be passed and signed, seat the new CRB, and turn our attention to more important matters that pretending that each little detail is going to make all of the police officers resign and new ones refuse to apply.

This process didn't have to be as painful as it has been, but it can end smoothly if we want it to.