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Former NAACP president among Buckhorn's picks for Tampa police review board

 
Mayor Bob Buckhorn's selections for Tampa's new Citizens Review Board for police include Dr. Carolyn Hepburn-Collins, the past president and current at-large executive committee member of the Hillsborough County branch of the NAACP.
Mayor Bob Buckhorn's selections for Tampa's new Citizens Review Board for police include Dr. Carolyn Hepburn-Collins, the past president and current at-large executive committee member of the Hillsborough County branch of the NAACP.
Published Oct. 20, 2015

TAMPA — From a list of 145 applicants, Mayor Bob Buckhorn on Monday named seven local civic leaders to serve as members and alternates on Tampa's first Citizens Review Board for police.

Buckhorn's five board members are:

• The Rev. Bartholomew Banks, pastor at St. John Progressive Missionary Baptist Church for 23 years and formerly Hillsborough County's director of aging services.

• Dr. Carolyn Hepburn-Collins, the past president and current executive committee member of the Hillsborough County branch of the NAACP. She works as a clinical nutrition specialist at Tampa General Hospital.

• Retired Florida 2nd District Court of Appeal judge, former Hillsborough County state attorney and local historian E.J. Salcines.

• Lincoln Tamayo, the head of school at Academy Prep Center of Tampa.

• Robert Shimberg, an attorney with the law firm Hill Ward Henderson and chairman of the board of Metropolitan Ministries. A former state prosecutor, he also has served on the board of the Tampa Housing Authority.

Buckhorn said he was confident the review board members would serve with integrity and responsibility.

"These men and women represent a vast cross-section of Tampa's most trusted and upstanding residents," Buckhorn said in announcing the appointees. "Their diverse backgrounds as well as unique life experiences will be key in providing an objective and transparent review of cases as they arise."

In the same statement, Police Chief Eric Ward called the appointees "an impressive and diverse group of people who are well-known and have earned the respect of our community."

As alternates, Buckhorn named:

• Lee Lowry, the former president of the Junior League of Tampa and current director of development and communications at St. John's Episcopal Day School.

• Bemetra Simmons, BB&T's Hillsborough County market president and a board member of the Tampa Housing Authority.

The City Council will appoint the other four members of the 11-member board, whose members will serve four-year terms. Council chairman Frank Reddick said the council still must decide how it will make those appointments. For example, will the council as a whole name the four additional members, or will each of the council's four members representing a single-member district name an appointee?

Whatever the case, Reddick said the council needs to act soon.

"Time is running out because we're coming up on the holidays," he said.

The idea for the review board gained public momentum this summer after the Tampa Bay Times reported that Tampa police wrote more tickets for bicycle infractions than St. Petersburg, Orlando, Jacksonville and Miami combined, with 80 percent going to black cyclists.

In response, the city asked the U.S. Justice Department's community policing office to review its practices, and police wrote fewer bike tickets last summer than in any summer in more than a decade.

The volunteer board is expected to begin meeting in December. It will review closed internal affairs cases involving the use of force and police pursuits, as well as other topics of public concern about police operations. The review board's monthly meetings will be open to the public and televised by the city.

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The board will make recommendations for improvements to the Police Department but will not, as civil rights groups and activists had demanded, have the authority to subpoena officers and police administrators to testify.

"The list is a diverse and impressive group of community leaders," said Laila Abdelaziz, the legislative and government affairs director for the Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

"Regardless," she added in an email to the Times, "they're serving on a board that is structured to fail the needs of the community when the community will look to the board for solutions and answers. Our criticism has never been focused on who will serve but (on) creating an actual external and credible civilian review board that can independently investigate community concerns and complaints."

The deadline for applications to the review board was Thursday.

Applicants had to be 18 or older and to live or own a business in the city. They must pass a background check, attend the Police Department's citizens academy and spend at least nine hours on ride-alongs with officers.

Not eligible for the review panel were city employees, relatives of Tampa police employees, current law enforcement officers, political candidates, elected officials, felons or anyone convicted of a crime of "moral turpitude."