Police in Miami showed restraint amid protests. That should be the norm. But is it? | Editorial

The officers of the Miami and Miami-Dade police departments stood up to protesters all weekend long, generally, by standing down. That is, they used restraint, even when protests turned from peaceful to fiery on Saturday night.

Credit the chiefs for deciding from the outset not to have their officers engage in the kind of excessive force that outraged protesters in the aftermath of the brutal death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

And this from departments that have their own troubled histories of systemic abuse of local African Americans.

Miami Police Chief Jorge Colina and Mayor Francis Suarez “did an outstanding job,” Stephen Hunter Johnson, board chair of the county’s Black Advisory Board, told the Editorial Board. Decrying the violence that occurred that night, “Saturday did not go as planned,” Johnson said, “but Saturday was not repeated on Sunday, and Sunday gave way to Monday.”

As demonstrations in South Florida and across the country continued, other large police departments have been smeared by their treatment of protesters.

Not in Miami, at least not this weekend. Or least they have not been caught on cell phone video, pushing peaceful, kneeling demonstrators to the ground, as a Fort Lauderdale police officer — now suspended — did.

But is this progress, or a one-off?

The departments’ history of excessive, and deadly, force, goes back further than the powder keg when four white police officers beat to death black insurance salesman Arthur McDuffie — and were acquitted, setting off Miami-Dade’s deadliest riots.

And in the past, the U.S. Department of Justice sued the Miami Police Department, accusing it of engaging in a pattern of excessive force in violation of residents’ constitutional rights, especially those of African-American residents.

Over the weekend, police chiefs in Miami, Miami-Dade and Coral Gables, among others, made clear that they agreed that Floyd’s death was a travesty and a crime. Several even took a knee with demonstrators and hugged as cameras rolled.

In recent years, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez and Miami’s Suarez have claimed their police departments have attacked racism among the ranks. Despite the weekend’s balancing act between allowing demonstrators to have their say and maintaining law and order — in an emotional environment — we’re not convinced.

Neither is Ruban Roberts, president of the Miami-Dade branch of the NAACP. He told the Editorial Board that he worked along with both departments, and praised their “painstaking efforts” to maintain a semblance of control over the weekend.

However, it’s what officers do when they’re not in the media spotlight, not being videotaped by a citizen with a cell phone that, rightly, remains a concern.

That’s why the venerable organization is calling for civilian oversight panels with subpoena powers for all municipalities in the county; quarterly implicit-bias training for all officers; culturally sensitive psychological background screenings; and disqualification of any police candidate who has been fired from another jurisdiction. This last is extremely important. A bad cop on one force shouldn’t be rewarded with the chance to be a bad cop on another.

Each and every one of these reforms will be enacted if elected officials are serious about police reform. And they should be.