Citizens Tell City Hall They Want Stronger Police Oversight

From Gainesville Sun

A group of citizens, some with signs bearing messages like "Honest cops don't fear citizen review," showed up at Gainesville City Hall on Thursday to tell city leaders they want a citizen board overseeing police with more teeth than the one the city manager has proposed.

They said City Manager Russ Blackburn's Citizen's Advisory Council, while "well-intentioned," wouldn't give members enough power to redress wrongdoing by members of the Gainesville Police Department. They hope commissioners will put the brakes on the advisory council and refer the item to a commission committee to hash it out.

They got what they wanted.

While the item wasn't on the agenda, roughly 15 citizens -- some attorneys or University of Florida law students -- spoke during the citizen comment portion of the meeting and urged them to consider, in lieu of the advisory council, an independent police review board that could receive complaints and conduct investigations and hold hearings.

Their method worked and sparked a lengthy discussion about what citizens should be able to demand of their police department.

Blackburn said that a recently passed state law prohibits such a board, but the city's legal office will be looking into that. Meanwhile, the City Commission's Public Safety Committee will be doing its own homework.

The CAC, according to a memo from Blackburn to the commissioners, would primarily review and advise the police chief on "personnel policy and procedures," "training issues" and "closed administrative investigations."

Michael Bowie, president of the Alachua County branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said his organization supports having a police review board, saying that many people don't complain about police injustice because they're afraid of retaliation.

"That's a real serious issue in this community," said Bowie, whose organization has a countywide board, Citizens' Law Enforcement Agency Review Board, that fields complaints about police.

After incidents, revealed in April 2009, in the Porters Community neighborhood in which GPD officers were throwing eggs at suspected drug dealers and prostitutes, there was a call for a citizen board.

The cry was exacerbated in March, when a University of Florida police officer shot graduate student Kofi Adu-Brempong for, at least in the opinion of Commissioner Jack Donovan, "no particularly good reason from what I read in the newspaper."

Jeff McAdams, president of the local Fraternal Order of Police chapter, said he was afraid of the unintended consequences of such a board and warned that the union would sue to prevent its formation.

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UF students are idiots.....it must suck to work in that town.


Bunch of drunk dope smokers want GPD to be second guessed and handicapped the way Machen does UFPD