Despite efforts to quash them, Black Lives Matter protests lead to change in Miami-Dade | Opinion
Update: The Miami-Dade County Commission gave initial approval to a civilian oversight panel of police with a 9-4 vote, enough to override a veto by Mayor Carlos Gimenez if the vote holds for the final round. Hialeah police joined Miami-Dade police in making the decision to ban the controversial choke hold technique.
The baseline ill, racism in policing, remains with us.
But despite efforts to quash Black Lives Matter protests in South Florida, the demonstrations of outrage over George Floyd’s murder — and the community activism that has risen around them — have already led to some positive change.
There’s quite a long road to travel to a better day, but law enforcement leaders have publicly committed to rooting out bad police officers from their ranks and are reviewing policies and practices.
This week, Miami-Dade police — the largest law enforcement agency in the Southeast and one of the few in South Florida to continue to allow officers to use a controversial chokehold to subdue suspects — banned the practice.
Long overdue, now it’s time for Hialeah police to listen, act, and do likewise in Miami-Dade’s second-largest city.
“The neck restraint can cut off breathing, and it can also paralyze,” said Miami-Dade Commissioner Barbara Jordan, who also has called for the creation of a civilian oversight panel. “To me, it’s inhumane to even apply it.”
Oversight panel for police
Police unions may not like them, but civilian review boards for police departments also are necessary — and some of the police handling of protesters is proving the case for one at the county level.
Some examples:
▪ The arrest report of Marco Antonio Lopez on allegations that he vandalized patrol cars during a protest in downtown Miami said that he was part of a group, “Southern Slaves,” which “actively recruits people to violently protest the government.”
It’s false.
Southern Slaves is a rap group, only guilty of belting out provocative lyrics.
Yet the branding by police led Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Miami, to up the ante and claim that this was evidence of “extremist groups” organizing to cause chaos in the United States.
It would be humorous coming from a man who said he loved rapper Tupac Shakur, who famously championed THUG LIFE, when Rubio was trying to look cool and raise his national profile.
But it’s spine-chilling to think a powerful politician, one who may shortly be running the Senate Intelligence Committee, can off-the-cuff brand you an extremist, armed with a police report written without proper investigation.
▪ People are alleging police have made frivolous arrests of protesters.
In her blog Political Cortadito, Elaine de Valle charged that Miami-Dade police made “extremely questionable arrests” at protests, including at a student-led one at Florida International University in which her niece was arrested. She called on State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle to investigate police conduct for “abuses and human rights violations.”
Fernandez Rundle announced she’s dropping charges on curfew arrests, but de Valle says that’s not enough, and she’s right.
“For days they [protesters] have been getting arrested and charged with breaking curfew, ‘illegal assembly,’ disorderly conduct and resisting arrest without violence — which could mean anything from trying to run away to sitting down with your hands up,” the blogger and former Herald reporter wrote.
The account her niece gave of how her arrest went down is over the top for a peaceful young woman who missed leaving the scene by six minutes after police declared the protest over and a curfew in place. (De Valle didn’t answer an email from me asking to interview her niece.)
An independent review panel — an effective one that must include a civil rights attorney, not a political whitewashing board — would give aggrieved people a voice, an opportunity to testify in detail about their treatment.
Being heard, after all, is what these protests are all about.
County commissioners are scheduled to vote June 16. It goes without saying that they should unanimously vote yes.
Racial profiling
Another issue that needs airing is racial profiling.
If police would stop identifying African Americans minding their own business as “suspects” to justify pulling them out of a car when they’re sitting in front of a friend’s house chatting or forcing them at gunpoint to drop to the ground during a stop for an alleged traffic violation, for no reason at all, we would be all the closer to reconciliation.
But as I wrote last year in a column about the profiling of a real estate agent and a high school track and field coach by the same police officer, this is what happens in the world of black men and Miami-Dade police.
I believe police chiefs who say they hate the bad apples among them as much as we do and they want them out of their police forces.
At the end of the day, most police officers are people like you and me who want to do their jobs well and safely go home to their families.
But words and good intentions aren’t sufficient anymore.
They never were.
Promises that don’t deliver results won’t cut it, now more than ever.
Video evidence has brought to the light for all to witness what African Americans have endured for far too long.
After the police killing of Floyd and a long list of unarmed African Americans, the times call for nothing less than meaningful reforms.
The Black Lives Matter movement and all the millions of Americans saying — enough! — in Florida, in our communities, and across the country, aren’t going to let us forget it.
This story was originally published June 12, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
