Florida Cities Sue DeSantis To Fight Racist HB 1 & For The Right To Reimagine Public Safety
HB1 disproportionately censors & incarcerates Black Floridians exercising constitutional rights. Cities are ready to be allies on police reform, so let them.
I n 2020, the movement for racial justice came to city hall. The murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, among countless others, at the hands of police spurred millions to demand an end to police persecution of Black and Brown communities.
People all across the country, from small towns to the largest cities, demanded that local leadership finally hold police accountable for their rampant abuses of power, rather than enable them.
In response to the 26 million people who protested over the summer of 2020 Florida Governor Ron DeSantis pushed the “Combating Violence, Disorder, and Looting, and Law Enforcement Protection Act,” better known as HB 1, through the Republican-controlled Florida legislature with little opportunity for public input.
HB 1 not only criminalizes protests after last year’s sweeping rallies for racial justice, but it also prevents cities from collaborating with community members, limiting local governments from adjusting their police budgets.
“The law targets Black protestors and their allies who demand racial justice and has already slowed protest activity among Black organizers in Florida,”
writes The Black Collective, an activist and community-organizing group
in Miami.“The law was passed in direct response to national protests — the vast majority of which were non-violent — demanding justice for the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and a reimagining of public safety.”
Local policing has long been wielded to oppress communities of color in the name of law and order, from the early colonial patrols that suppressed enslaved people fighting for freedom to the local forces that enforced Jim Crow and Black codes — passed shortly after the outlawing of slavery — which specified how, when, and where freed people could work and how much they would be paid, maintaining the de facto structure of slavery.
In the more modern era, we find police networks perpetuating a War on Drugs that has disproportionately incarcerated Black people.
Study after study has shown that police continue to disproportionately kill Black people at double or even triple the rate of white people. Cities have generally stood by and enabled police departments, drastically increasing their funding and giving them greater power and impunity despite this abuse.
Here’s the Good News
Now, however, cities present an opportunity for meaningful reform. In 2020, nearly half of the U.S.’s largest cities reduced the police budget — often the first decrease in decades — and invested that money in much-needed social services or alternative community-based models for public safety. New York City became the first city to end qualified immunity for police, which protected them against civil lawsuits.
Many cities, from San Francisco to Tallahassee, are piloting programs to deploy crisis response teams comprised of mental health professionals, paramedics, and the like to respond to behavioral crisis calls, instead of armed police.
Conservative states know how powerful local reform movements can be and are targeting any cities considering police reform with a coercive tool called “preemption,” a political device that enables the state to strip away local authority to make policy reforms.
In 2021, after cities began to work with community members to reinvest local tax dollars in social services rather than law enforcement, states intervened with 24 bills to preempt cities from making any reductions to the police budget, four of which ultimately passed. Red states also passed bills to gut the power of civilian oversight commissions and prevent police body camera footage from being released to the public.
“There’s no question that the intent behind this law is to silence Black-led protests,” writes Nadege Green, Director of Research for the Community Justice Project. “In 1967 when Florida enacted its first ‘anti-riot law,’ it was Black people demanding justice that led to it being passed.” (It started as a bill sponsored by Rep. Bob Rust, a former Miami police officer turned Republican Florida legislator.)
“I think we always have to consider history to understand how we got here,” says Green. “Criminalizing Black-led protests in Florida is a tradition rooted in the suppression of Black folks asking for basic rights and fair treatment in this state.”
“This was not a bill that was asked for and this was not a bill that was needed,” Mayor Wayne Messam of Miramar said in a recent meeting authorizing litigation. HB 1 “doesn’t fully vet the impacts,” on local budgeting, he noted, and “would impede the city’s ability to serve our residents.”
Cities in Florida did not ask for this law and they do not want it. They want to be responsive to their communities, and they need the ability to do so. That’s why Public Rights Project has assembled a coalition of nine cities throughout Florida to challenge the Governor’s unconstitutional power grab and transparent attempts to block collaboration between cities and community members on justice reform.
“Local governments are the closest to the people. Local governments provide the day-to-day services that Floridians rely on, from public transportation to parks and libraries to safety and emergency services.
Municipalities have a responsibility to allocate these services in ways that best respond to the needs of the local community, and to do that, they need authority to craft budgets that reflect community values. This budget-making authority lies at the heart of a municipality’s legislative powers.”
— Gainesville et al v. DeSantis et al
Until HB 1 is overturned in court, the movement to reimagine public safety will be blocked throughout Florida, so it is crucial to protect cities’ power to decrease their police budget. Local governments have not always been the most reliable partner — it’s true — but they present a real opportunity for meaningful criminal justice reform.
“The impact of HB1 is deep because when you think about all the demands that were happening, post and before George Floyd, people were calling for reimagining public safety and what it would look like if police budgets were reimagined in ways that actually support the community—like housing,” says Tifanny Burks, activist and member of Black Lives Matter Alliance of Broward.
“HB 1 is really an attack on us trying to express our first amendment rights because this is the core of the work we do. It has had a tremendous negative effect.”
Protecting local democracy from state encroachment is only the first step for police reform. We all must advocate and partner with cities to ensure that they use the power they do have to take meaningful action against the power and impunity that has allowed racism to run rampant in local police departments.
We must protect our cities as partners, but also hold them accountable to serve all of our communities.
