Police review panel clears final vote in Miami-Dade, but Mayor Gimenez hints at veto

Miami-Dade commissioners voted Wednesday to revive a civilian panel to investigate police misconduct, but not by the kind of wide margin needed to overcome a possible veto by Mayor Carlos Gimenez.

Thrust onto the agenda in response to the death of George Floyd during an arrest in Minneapolis, the legislation by Commissioner Barbara Jordan finds itself in the same place a similar bill landed two years ago. Commissioners approved activating the panel in 2018, but Gimenez vetoed it.

That scenario may be playing out again, with Gimenez expressing strong concerns about giving the panel subpoena power. On Wednesday, Gimenez told Jordan he would have signed an earlier version of the panel bill but sees serious flaws in what commissioners were about to pass.

“I’m happy to support what you put before,” said Gimenez, a Republican running for Florida’s 26th congressional seat. “But you changed it. That’s the problem.”

Even if Gimenez vetoes the bill, Miami-Dade voters will likely have the final say on the matter. Commissioners also approved a proposed charter amendment establishing the panel, and the item is set to appear on the November ballot.

Reviving Miami-Dade’s police oversight panel after it was stripped of funding a decade ago emerged as the county’s primary legislative response to racial-justice protests that swept through Miami in late May and early June.

The Jordan proposal creates a panel appointed by commissioners with the power to investigate police misconduct and other issues, with the same subpoena power granted other boards. State law bars civilian panels from issuing subpoenas to police officers, but the Miami-Dade panel could demand records and testimony from others involved in arrests and civilian confrontations.

The nonpartisan commission’s five Republican members voted against the proposal: Esteban “Steve” Bovo, Jose “Pepe” Diaz, Joe Martinez, Rebeca Sosa, and Javier Souto. The remaining eight members voted for it, one short of the nine votes needed to override a veto.

Critics on the commission complained that Miami-Dade was reworking its police misconduct procedures because of what officers did nearly 2,000 miles away.

“We had an incident in Minnesota that I think every single person on this board immediately condemned, yet now all of a sudden we have to reform our entire police department?” said Bovo, who is running to succeed Gimenez in November. “It feeds into this hyper-liberal version of what many want our local governments to turn into.”

Jordan did not single out commissioners in her comments, but addressed Hispanic members in general in complaining of a blindness to racism that Black residents in Miami-Dade face.

“Systemic racism truly exists. Whether you realize it or not, it exists in Miami-Dade County. It exists in everything that we experience as a people,” said Jordan, one of four Black commissioners. “Many of you don’t recognize it because you have the privilege of a different skin color. Or a different ethnic group. ... Those of you may speak a different language, move to another part of the country where that language is not appreciated, and you’re not appreciated. Your skin color won’t matter.

“We have a difference of opinion,” she said of her legislation, “mainly because our experiences are different. “

The debate began with Jordan making a concession on her original proposal, which would have limited panel appointees to people nominated by a committee composed of members of county advisory groups from the community. The nominating committee would forward two people from each commissioner’s district, and one of those would be selected.

The mechanism won praise from groups advocating for a panel insulated from commissioner influence. “The more independence that the panel has ... it has a greater opportunity to build confidence in the community,” Christopher Benjamin, a lawyer and leader of a local NAACP chapter, told commissioners at the start of the meeting.

Jordan later accepted an amendment from Commissioner Sally Heyman to let commissioners reject the nominations and seat who they want. But one restriction remained: The 13-member panel could not have more than two members from the same field, a measure that would foil efforts to stack the board with retired police officers.

Gimenez praised the change, saying commissioners should be free to appoint who they want. The mayor pointed to appointments procedures in 2018 when he vetoed Jordan legislation to restart an oversight panel with seats reserved for community groups, including the county’s police chiefs association and the ACLU.

Miami-Dade created its first police review board in the wake of civil unrest in the 1980s that followed the killing of an unarmed Black man, Arthur McDuffie, by four county police officers. It lost funding during the budget crisis of 2009 under then-Mayor Carlos Alvarez, a former county police director.

Gimenez and commissioners raised concerns about staffing costs for the new panel. The Jordan item included a proposed budget of less than $800,000, but opponents predicted it would go higher. Gimenez noted the money comes from the same $1.7 billion pool of property taxes and other “general funds” that pay for the police department and other core county functions. “Something else won’t be funded,” he said.

But at less than $1 million, the panel’s budget would be less than other miscellaneous expenses covered by the general fund. In 2020, the general fund paid for a $1.5 million grant to the Orange Bowl and another $1.5 million for tech initiatives that include the annual eMerge Americas conference.

Jean Monestime, the board’s first Haitian-American member, said Miami-Dade shouldn’t reject an oversight panel because most police officers act properly. “This item is not about the good cops, those who aren’t racist,” he said. “What is the cost of one single life taken unjustly by a bad police officer? We cannot make this about good cops.”

This story was originally published July 8, 2020 at 5:04 PM.