The latest draft ordinance proposal from Mayor Jane Castor that aims to improve the city’s oversight agency that investigates police misconduct was pulled from the City Council agenda Thursday, and won’t come back for consideration for another three months.

Reacting to intense criticism about the Citizens Review Board (CRB) that surfaced during the protests for racial equality and police accountability this summer, the mayor has been trying to find common cause between civil liberty groups like the ACLU and Tampa for Justice with the Tampa Police Benevolent Association (PBA), the department’s police union.

Since its inception in 2015, activists have alleged that the board lacks sufficient power to hold the police accountable. They’ve been unsuccessful in calling on former Mayor Bob Buckhorn and now Castor to provide the ability to subpoena officers involved in an investigation. The proposed draft that the Castor administration released this week also rejects other proposals that the ACLU has called for – like giving the board its own investigators and attorney and allowing the council to pick the majority of the 11-member board.

 “The people of Tampa are pleading for police oversight,” Allison Remberac said during the public comment portion of Thursday’s meeting. “We want the Citizens Review Board to actually have the power to review - without it being through the agency that they are supposed to be reviewing.”

There have been several council workshops on the CRB since June, but unlike those other meetings, this time the room (a ballroom at the Tampa Convention Center) was filled with both critics and supporters of the Tampa Police Department, thanks to the Tampa PBA sending out a message on social media this week calling on friends and family members of law enforcement officers to “support the PBA fighting against the ACLU.”

“If this board is a sham as some advocate groups have claimed and believe, then maybe we should do away with the board. But certainly, we shouldn’t give it greater powers,” said Teresa Miller, the first speaker of the morning. 
Miller went on to criticize the notion of allowing the city council “to be the sole determining factor of who sits on the board,” saying if that was allowed, it would potentially be relying on “people who get most of their information from watching ‘Bad Boys,’ ‘Law and Order’ or ‘Miami Vice.’”

But in fact the proposal by the mayor splits the power of selecting the 11-member board between Castor and the council, with each getting to choose five members. The 11^thvoting member would come from the NAACP and be selected by the council.

The proposal also calls for allowing former TPD officers or other law enforcement officers to be eligible to serve on the CRB as long as they haven’t been in that position for the previous two years.

Some supporters of the police accused council members at the meeting of wanting to “defund the police,” which is not the case. In fact, the council approved a $13 million increase to the police department in September.

“Nobody’s talking about defunding the police. We’re talking about reform,” David Roundtree said.

ACLU attorney James Shaw Jr. said Mayor Castor’s latest proposed draft was heavy with input from the police union.

“I want to be 100 percent clear: the draft ordinance you received a few days ago was not the result of any collaboration with the local ACLU chapter,” he told the council via telephone. “We were humored at best, but our concerns were ignored, and what you got in the end was a result of lobbying by the PBA at the drafting level.”

The Tampa Police Benevolent Association commissioned a poll late last week of 400 residents that showed strong support for the police, as well as on questions on whether an experienced law officer should be a member of the CRB. 

However, when asked if they believed that the TPD does a good job of exposing and disciplining officers that have failed to uphold their sworn oath, the majority said that they were unsure or refused to answer the question. 

Mayor Castor’s draft proposal on her changes to the CRB will come back before the City Council on February 25.