This Week In South Florida: Rodney Jacobs

. On Miami is among the South Florida cities that had citizen panels to review allegations of police conduct. Voters created the Cipp Civilian Investigative Panel two decades ago from community concerns about police use of force. Fast forward to this year, there were 21 such panels around the state until the new state law that took effect that took away their power. The Miami is planning to defund its CIP despite a groundswell of support for it and a lawsuit against its demise . It was filed by Rodney Jacobs, the executive director of Miami's Civilian Investigative Panel. And I wanted to sort of bring you in and talk about the lawsuit and the new law because, you know, there are two sides to this. Of course. So, first of all, the basis for the lawsuit. >> Yeah. Well, really the basis is, is that we believe that the city of Miami has misconstrued the state law to defund us. We believe in totality that although the law does constrict some of the work we do, it does not. It's not a mandate to totally defund. >> So the HB 601 is the is the basis for the law, essentially taking the oversight of police and making it uniform around the state. That was the stated intent of the law. So it does not say that you can't exist. Correct But it certainly takes away any of the power you have to do anything like you're doing ING. >> Yeah. So it definitely constrains our investigative powers, but that's all it does. And if anyone's been following our work over the lasten years or so, they've seen us do a litany of things to include our community police mediation program review department orders and procedures, which comes to people's minds after, you know, the holds that George Floyd was in. You know, we've outlawed some of those measures and review policy as it pertains to that. And then also, we can still review and audit closed internal affairs cases. So there's still a lot of work that can be done even with this new law. In effect. >> But why when you do that, what would be the outcome that you couldn't now go forward with that you did before? >> So the outcome is pretty much the same. The major difference is that our investigation powers are slightly different. So instead of us taking in a new complaint or starting a case, um, self initiating it, we would have to wait till internal Affairs closes the case. And there's still a lot of great value that can come from that, especially if the case is incomplete. >> So in Fort Lauderdale, which also disbanded its form of the panel, they were volunteers. This panel was volunteers Miami spending 1,000,003. That was just defunded from the budget after this law, do you see a role for something like a volunteer panel? >> So we have a volunteer panel as well. We have a 13 member panel. We just have a professional staff that does the investigative work. Right. So we submit those complaints in closed case files to the volunteer panel. And they make a finding of fact that we share with the police chief or but but I do think there is value obviously, in having community interaction and engagement for sure. >> So the law 601 allows sheriffs and actually it it mandates such a panel within departments, but it allows sheriffs to create that. Miami's police chief, Manuel Morales, has his own board that's very similar. And we asked him this week what e difference his board would be from your board. And I want to be able to let you and our viewers hear what he said. Okay, let's do it. >> The plan, as it stands now from the administration's point of view and mine is take my chief's advisory panel and kind of morph them and add some responsible bodies to it. Right. So they're kind of quasi using as, as an advisory board for myself. They would assume most of the roles that the civilian Investigative Panel does. Now, my US, the investigation of police officers. Right. Uh, the new law clearly states that only the police officers can investigate, um, allegations of wrongdoing by officers. Right. But there's nothing to preclude us from reviewing those cases. So sitting down and getting a case that's controversial, that Internal Affairs finishes investigating and presenting it to the board and telling me, hey, how do you feel the investigation went? How do you feel the discipline procedure goes? >> So are you good with that? >> Well, listen, let me first and foremost say that I think Chief Morales is doing the best that he can considering this new law. I have nothing but respect for Chief Morales and the work we've done over the last few years. You know, he's essentially taking this advisory group that he's already had and essentially giving them more responsibility. And my thing to that is, listen, we don't need to recreate the wheel. We already have an organization that's doing that work in, in large part, that the community supports. You know, we received a bunch of letters of support and statements from the ACLU to NAACP catalyst, Miami, you name it. There's been a lot of letters of support and people showing up in our defense. And I imagine that people that are a part of this new organization will likely come from a lot of these community organizations. So, in my opinion, a lot of the things that he just said, I agree with. >> So let's just he's got this board, right. What would you do to that? He wouldn't do well. >> Well, what we would do is obviously the work that I just mentioned that we've currently been doing now, his group right now, they haven't been doing the same work that we've been doing for the last 20 years. He just said, listen, the group that we have has been here in an advisory capacity and we'll try to do some of the things that CIP is currently doing. Well, my argument is like, well, we're already doing the work and we know how to do it well, right? But state legislators said we'd like it to do do it this way. Well, that's that's the thing the state legislature isn't necessarily doing that. They're saying essentially that they can't have the investigative component. >> Do you think this is a matter of taking a sort of this very controversial issue, especially where race relations are concerned, especially in South Florida and saying, look, this is a really important thing to have this relationship with the community. And we've been doing it. I mean, essentially that's what you're saying. Yeah. >> I mean, listen, I think by and large, people understand that we need someone to help navigate these tough police encounters and ensure that the community has a say in what goes on. I don't think anyone disagrees with that. It's just the how mechanism and what I can say is, least in South Florida, in the city of Miami, for the better part of 20 years here, we've been able to do that in a way that has been productive and collaborative. >> All right. One last question about the how of all this in Miami, voters created this. Correct. How how can the city take it away? >> Well, that's part of part of our argument for litigation. It's that listen, this is a charter violation. This is essentially in the constitution of the city of Miami. You cannot defund this or make it go away just by a few vote of the commissioner. So I think there's a lot of legal questions here. We still have to sift forward and out, and hopefully within the next week or so, uh, Judge Walsh and her team are able to do so. >> Where where is the lawsuit? Is there a response to it? Has there been a hearing set? >> No hearing set as of yet. We the I believe the legal team has has served the city of Miami. They are aware of the complaint in the injunction. Obviously with an injunction there's really two two major things and that's urgency and irreparable harm that's looking at. And so hopefully we get on the calendar here within the next week. >> And before you filed this lawsuit, had you talked to anybody from the other 20 panels around the state? >> Yeah. So not only just that, but the city of Miami as well. Listen, we weren't surprised by this law. We had been working and lobbying against it since the better part of last year. You've been here talking about it? Yeah, I've been here talking about it. So, you know, we had ways around this that I thought would be win wins for everyone. I wanted to work with the City of Miami and the commissioners. I was very diplomatic in this approach, I feel, and very level headed and understood kind of the politics that were involved. And to no avail, however. So, you know, right now we're just, you know, doing what we can. And the next logical step was obviously litigation. >> And so stay tuned. >> So stay tuned.