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No agreement ahead of Tampa City Council vote on police review board

 
Tampa City Councilman Frank Reddick, left, and Mayor Bob Buckhorn, right, after a 2012 news conference outside New Hope Missionary Baptist Church. At center in the background is East Tampa community revitalization partnership chairman Essie Sims Jr. [DANIEL WALLACE   |   Times (2012)]
Tampa City Councilman Frank Reddick, left, and Mayor Bob Buckhorn, right, after a 2012 news conference outside New Hope Missionary Baptist Church. At center in the background is East Tampa community revitalization partnership chairman Essie Sims Jr. [DANIEL WALLACE | Times (2012)]
Published Oct. 8, 2015

TAMPA — They had a cordial meeting last week, but going into an expected City Council vote tonight council chairman Frank Reddick and Mayor Bob Buckhorn have no agreement on the makeup of Tampa's new Citizens Review Board for police.

"Obviously," Buckhorn says, "there's a difference in opinion on the number of appointees."

Buckhorn created the 11-member board with nine mayoral appointees and two named by City Council.

Reddick wants seven members appointed by the council, one for each member of the council. For him, that's non-negotiable.

"I stand firm and will not walk away from each member of the council being able to appoint one member of the board," says Reddick, who has one of the seven votes on the council. "I will not back down."

After several weeks of activist group protest — more over the scope of the board's authority than who picks its members — Buckhorn offered the council four appointees, one for each of the council's four single-member districts.

The mayor turned down Reddick's proposal to expand the board to 15 members — seven named by council, the remaining eight by Buckhorn.

"Once you get a committee that's too large, it becomes unmanageable," he says.

So when the council meets at 5:30 p.m. today, it will consider a proposed ordinance to codify the executive order that Buckhorn signed on Aug. 28 to create the review board. Along the way, it will try to reach a consensus on who gets what picks. Once members are appointed and trained — each has to go through the Police Department's citizens academy and spend nine hours riding with patrol officers — the board will review closed internal affairs cases involving the use of force and pursuits. If it finds problems, it can make recommendations for change to the city.

Council member Yvonne Yolie Capin says passing the ordinance is important because it grounds the review board's existence in law. The mayor can revise or rescind an executive order at any time without talking to anyone beforehand, she says, but changing an ordinance requires public notice and public hearings.

Buckhorn considers the ordinance to be unnecessary, but he doesn't have a problem with it as long as it is consistent with his executive order. He has agreed with a council proposal to stagger the terms of the review board members so that it doesn't turn over completely following the election of a new mayor and council.

Neither the mayor nor council members are talking about trying to give the review board the authority to subpoena officers to testify. City attorneys say it's not legal under the city charter as currently written. The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida and other activist groups disagree and argue that subpoena power is needed to create an independent board that can hold police accountable for their actions.

Instead, recent council discussions have largely focused on the number of review board members the council and the mayor each get to pick.

If the council tries to expand the board, Buckhorn says he'll veto the ordinance and go ahead with the plan based on the authority in his executive order.

"That executive order remains in place and this committee will be set up under the executive order," he says. "This is a mayoral decision. ... I'm trying to be respectful of council's role," but "I've got to balance the needs of the city, the police officers and the communities that we police."

It would take five votes to override his veto, but it's not clear what might happen next if council did so. Buckhorn says the review board will be created no matter what. City Attorney Julia Mandell and an outside attorney she hired on the issue disagree with City Council attorney Martin Shelby on just who has the authority to do what.

After months of discussion and debate, Reddick says he's ready for the matter to come to a vote.

If no last-minute compromise emerges with Buckhorn today, "basically what we'll do is we'll take it to a vote," he says. "We would put the number in that we feel comfortable with."

Contact Richard Danielson at rdanielson@tampabay.com or (813) 226-3403. Follow @Danielson_Times