TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – A bill that could change how investigations are carried out by local law enforcement.
Senate Bill 576 claims review boards are divisive and second guess police. If passed, it could ban all police review boards that investigate law enforcement across the state. It was filed by state Sen. Blaise Ingoglia of Spring Hill.
Calia Coleman is a former chairwoman of the Orlando citizens police review board. She said she’s totally against the bill.
“If you get rid of these review boards, then we’re going to have an issue, and the police will not be trusted by the citizens because there’s no way to check them or no way to figure out what’s going on,” Coleman said.
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When asked why she joined the police review board, she said, “For me, it was an interesting way to serve my community outside of being an attorney to see what I can kind of do to bridge the gap between police officers and the citizens.”
“We didn’t have the power to punish police officers or anything like that. Our job was to simply review what happened and give our opinions back to internal affairs or internal investigations,” said Coleman.
Coleman was on the Orlando police review board in 2020 when we saw nationwide protests and riots, even here locally after George Floyd was killed.
Coleman said the many protests we saw in downtown Orlando during 2020 made the review board even more vocal about police accountability and transparency.
“I don’t know if people know, but the review board was very pivotal in making sure that every police officer had a body camera,” said Coleman.
Former Orlando Police Chief Orlando Rolon said he’s also not in favor of an all-out ban on review boards.
“I think it’s very important to have that component in place,” said Rolon.
He said he’s been in support of the Orlando citizens police review board since 1992.
“More appropriate would be to set a structure in my opinion to have a better structure so that everyone can operate under the same guidelines,” said Rolon.
News 6 reached out to Sen. Ingoglia’s office Wednesday. He was not available for an interview. The Senate bill passed its first of three committees.
News 6 reached out to a few jurisdictions across Central Florida to get their perspective on this bill.
“As a city, we believe that local governments know best how to meet the needs of our communities, residents and businesses. Because of this belief, we are generally opposed to bills that seek to preempt local government in these efforts. With that said, specific to this proposed bill, our legislative team is aware of it and are exploring what potential, if any, impacts there are for our city. We’ll continue this work and will monitor the proposed bill as it goes through the legislative process.”
City of Orlando
“The City of Sanford does not have a citizen’s review board. We had one in the past, but now receive public input in other ways and on a broader array of topics. Sanford decided as a community that a review board was not the process we wanted to use, it was and should be a local decision. There are some communities that use them and they work for those communities. According to senate staff analysis of the bill, there are only 21 cities that have a board that would be affected. They should be allowed to choose what works for them. Preventing cities from allowing citizen oversight of a government agency attacks the foundation of how we govern. The state should leave local decisions to local decision makers.”
City of Sanford
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