BREAKING: Miami to Shut Down Its Police Civilian Investigative Panel

The City of Miami will disband its two-decade-old Civilian Investigative Panel (CIP) to comply with a new state law.

Rodney Jacobs, executive director of the CIP, tells New Times the city informed him yesterday of its decision to dissolve the Miami Police Department (MPD) civilian oversight panel in response to a new Florida law that severely limits the power of such boards by, among other restrictions, preventing them from investigating complaints of misconduct by law enforcement officers.

When the law went into effect on July 1, Jacobs says, the CIP proposed relinquishing its investigative powers while keeping other functionalities intact, including its ability to review MPD's orders and standard operating procedures before they're enacted.

He says the city refused to make any concessions.

"They chewed on it for a bit and kind of came out with their decision thereafter," Jacobs says, "which was to dissolve us in the entirety."

The panel's final meeting was on June 18, two weeks before the new law took effect. Several meetings have been scheduled in the months since; they've all been canceled.

In a statement sent to New Times, the city says that "the City of Miami is barred from allocating budget funds to a board whose main purpose and duties are contrary to Florida Statutes" as a consequence of the new law.

"The new law permits the Miami Chief of Police to establish a new civilian oversight board to review the policies and procedures of the department and its subdivisions," the statement reads. "Per the statute, the board must be composed of at least three and up to seven members appointed by the police chief, one of which shall be a retired law enforcement officer. The chief is in the process of establishing the new oversight board that will comply with the new law."

Established in 2001 following public outrage over a series of deadly shootings involving Miami cops, the CIP is an oversight committee of everyday civilians that independently investigates complaints of police misconduct. While the 11-person panel isn't empowered to discipline Miami police, it can propose recommendations to the department.

In many of its investigations, the panel has used footage from body-worn cameras assigned to police officers to draw conclusions about complaints. The CIP brought to light a number of violent police arrests over the years and frequently cited MPD officers who failed to follow department bodycam policy.

As of December 2021, 21 Florida cities had civilian police review panels, many of which cropped up following the murder of George Floyd, according to a 2022 report from the LeRoy Collins Institute, a nonpartisan statewide policy institute at Florida State University.

Amid news of other panels shuttering across the state, including in Orlando, it's unclear how many remain active today.

As for the future of Miami's CIP?

"There's still a little bit of a little bit of hope here," Jacobs allows.

He says the city's first budget hearing is scheduled for September 7 and urges residents to attend and speak up about the importance of the CIP, which he describes as a "free service to the people of the city."

"Let's just say, hypothetically, all this does come to pass and we're no longer in existence, I think it's going to be catastrophic consequences," Jacobs says. "Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but in a few weeks from now, in a few months, or even a few years from now, people are going to look to an organization like ours for police accountability and transparency."