How to make Miami Beach’s troubled police anti-harassment law worse? Add the Legislature | Editorial

Miami Beach passed a law in June that made it a crime to stand within 20 feet of police officers with the “intent to impede, provoke or harass” them, an ordinance that almost instantly revealed big problems in the way it was enforced.

After just one month, Miami Beach temporarily suspended its enforcement after a series of troubling arrests, including one that drew a national spotlight. Two men were arrested July 26 at the Royal Palm hotel in South Beach as they were filming police officers. One, 28-year-old Khalid Vaughn, was attacked by police while he was using his phone to record officers making an extremely rough arrest. The officers slammed him into a concrete pillar, then punched and elbowed him in the head and rib cage. Vaughn’s friend, Sharif Cobb, also was arrested — and punched by an officer — after videoing officers as they waited outside the lobby to transport his friend to jail.

Not only were the charges against both men dropped by the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office; five Miami Beach police were charged with misdemeanor battery after prosecutors said they used excessive force in making the arrests. It was a rare and speedy rebuke of the police.

In another case under the same law, a woman from New York was pepper-sprayed by Miami Beach police while she was recording a traffic stop.

Sketchy enforcement

The law becomes even more problematic when you look at the disturbing statistics it racked up when it was being enforced. At least 13 arrests were made under the Miami Beach ordinance, the Miami Herald reported. At least eight of those arrests were of people who’d been using their phones to record officers. All 13 were young Black men or women.

Those are some pretty strong indications that there is something seriously wrong with the way this law is being enforced. To Miami Beach’s credit, the halt in enforcement is so that police officers can receive more training in what the law actually allows.

And yet into that roiling mess marches Hialeah Rep. Alex Rizo, pushing forward with a proposal for a new state law that allows for even greater abuse. Rizo wants a law similar to Miami Beach’s — he called his bill a “cut and paste” of Miami Beach’s. But he wants everyone to stay even farther back — 30 feet. He told the Editorial Board that he had consulted with police who told him 21 feet is sufficient to allow for self-defense in many cases, and yet he tacked on another nine feet for no discernible reason.

He pointed out that there is no mention in his bill of recording or videoing, and it does not criminalize recording police. That’s the same thing, however, that Miami Beach said before their ordinance was passed. And we see how well that worked out.

Most troubling of all, though, is the incredible vagueness of Rizo’s proposal. It would make it a crime for anyone to come within 30 feet of an officer with the intent of interfering with or harassing that officer “directly or indirectly.”

What exactly is “indirectly” harassing an officer? We don’t know, and Rizo couldn’t tell us. Could that be interpreted by police as recording them? Khalid Vaughn probably has some thoughts on that.

Working on it?

Rizo did tell the Editorial Board that definitions for such terms would be worked out when the bill goes through the legislative process next year. Forgive us if we are highly skeptical of anyone who tells us to trust the Legislature.

And given the track record of the Miami Beach law, even if lawmakers do manage to define the terminology in a way that makes it marginally less subjective and less reliant on police discretion in the heat of the moment, this is still a bad idea because it is too open to abuse. Exhibit A: Miami Beach’s law.

Rizo proposed the idea of this buffer zone last year, too. It sank then without a ripple, fortunately. (Although we do wonder why, in the ensuing year, he hasn’t worked to clarify the wording of his proposal.)

We want police officers to be safe. We agree that they should not be harassed or interfered with while trying to do their incredibly difficult, and sometimes deadly, jobs. But there is already a law on the books that allows them to arrest those who obstruct officers trying to perform their duties.

We know from the example of George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis that officers’ actions must be open to public scrutiny. Video recording by bystanders has become an important tool for the public to expose that kind of wrongdoing. No law, no matter how well-intended, should be used to shield the police from such monitoring.

Rizo’s plan is unnecessary and far too vague, especially when we have already seen the disturbing results in Miami Beach. We urge the Legislature to do exactly what it did last year with this misguided proposal.

This story was originally published September 7, 2021 at 1:56 PM.