TAMPA, Fla. — The topic of beefing up Tampa's Citizens Review Board (CRB) and the power it has to investigate internal police cases is causing a lot of conversation and even leading to protests.
And to understand why, we went straight to some of those closest to the issue, like the Greater Tampa Bay Chapter of the ACLU.
The group's Legal Chair, James Shaw, said this issue goes back to 2015.
"And at that time, several local groups including the Tampa for Justice Coalition, the NAACP, the ACLU [and] several others got together and asked for the city to create a citizens review board," he said.
But despite its creation, Shaw also said the ACLU felt that the CRB didn't really have the power it needed to properly investigate cases involving police conduct.
"After the murder of George Floyd, there was renewed interest in modernizing Tampa's Civilian Review Board," said Shaw, "And so the requests that we had made at the time in 2020 were to change the way in which CRB members were appointed so it was no longer majority mayoral appointments, we wanted to have citizens be able to bring complaints directly to the CRB instead of having to go through the police department. We wanted to CRB to be able to issue subpoenas and get information that wasn't just given to them. And we wanted the CRB to have its own independent attorney."
In 2021, the ACLU also commissioned a survey of 590 people in Tampa of different races, ages, genders, and political backgrounds on these issues:
- 76 percent agreed that the CRB appointment process should change
- 74 percent said they should have subpoena power
- 68 percent said that the CRB should have an independent attorney
In the time since the survey, those first two suggestions haven't made it far with the city council—but the third push, for an independent attorney, is now being considered.
Shaw said it's a change that would fix a conflict of interest because the city attorney's office currently advises the CRB.
"And we're asking for an attorney that doesn't answer to any boss that works for the city and is also charged with protecting the city from liability and giving advice to the police department," he said.
And it's a change that the Tampa Bay Community Action Committee (TBCAC) agrees with.
"As it stands, an outside counsel would be an improvement, regardless," said Joseph Nohava.
Nohava and the group feel so strongly about this that they've protested several times to raise awareness.
"The way we figure it is any and all tools that the CRB can have to gather evidence is a net positive," she said.
Nohava added that pushing for an independent attorney is just the tip of the iceberg for the TBCAC. Ultimately they'd like to see community control of the police department.
"That's our sort of fundamental goal. So an elected citizen sort of board that would able to oversee police hirings, firings, policy and would be able to select the police chief."
It's not clear if the city council will address that proposed change in the near future. But based on their Feb. 16 meeting, it appears that they are in favor of moving forward with an independent attorney for the CRB.
"What I want to see done and I think a majority of us want to do this, which is to have the board retain privately retained counsel and do it in the most reasonable way and not get, in my opinion, get caught up on small issues," said Councilman Luis Viera, "That's what I'm looking at, making sure the board has privately retained counsel, I think that's reasonable, I'm fine with that."
According to city documents, that privately retained attorney would come at a cost to the city—to the tune of $100,000 per year.
Some in the community have asked ABC Action News if that attorney could truly be independent if the city is still technically paying them.
So we asked the two groups at the forefront of this fight.
"The civil service board has an outside attorney that is a private law firm that's hired by the city, and the city pays their bills but the city doesn't control the independent judgment of the attorney," said Shaw.
"I guess the money's got to come from somewhere, right? I think it just gonna come down to, you know, what is this person's role? What are they being paid to do? Is it this dual kind of relationship? Or is this person strictly being paid for one purpose?" Nohava.
This all comes after the city council originally voted to place this issue on the March 7 ballot for citizens to vote on themselves.
But after the mayor vetoed that proposed change and several others—they decided to vote on the issue of independent counsel as an ordinance to try and avoid another veto from the mayor.
Thursday's meeting would also be the first reading of this ordinance change. And if it moves forward, it could be one of the last big changes that many of the current council members have the chance to vote on ahead of several city run-off races in late April.
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