With help from lawmakers, cops in Florida could see ‘fewer complaints, fewer investigations and more coverups’

There’s never a good time to make it more difficult for the public to oversee the police. There couldn’t be a worse time than now. 

The murders of two innocent civilians in Minneapolis, seen on video worldwide, have shown what can happen when there is no accountability for poorly trained and poorly led cops.   

The federal agent who killed Renee Good, calling her a “fucking bitch,” as she died, would be fired by any well-run civilian force for shooting into a moving car whose driver was trying to avoid the agent.  The gang that shot Alex Pretti multiple times as they held him defenseless on the pavement would likely be indicted but for the Trump administration shielding them. 

As if those events hadn’t happened, the Florida Legislature is about to chill citizen complaints against bad officers and entitle them to promotions even with clouds hanging over their heads.

Senate Bill 1544 and CS/HB 1283, as approved easily by several committees, forbid supervisors to question any police or correctional officers about complaints that aren’t “signed by the complainant under oath.” The officer would be entitled to see the complaint, and know who signed it before being questioned by superiors. 

That means fewer complaints, fewer investigations, and more cover-ups.

People who witness police abuse or suffer it themselves would have to think twice about identifying themselves before knowing whether the agency will take their reports seriously. 

The only exceptions in the bills allow interrogation if there is “corroborating evidence” to support an anonymous complaint. But frequently, there is none at the outset, especially if it’s about a prison or jail guard having or demanding sex with an inmate. That doesn’t happen in front of witnesses or video cameras.

Records at the Florida Department of Law Enforcement show that its Criminal Justice Standards and Training Commission considered 30 cases of “unprofessional” relations during 2025, most of them in the state prison system. The commission is the last stop, where offenders can lose their certifications or have them suspended, after being disciplined by their employers. 

All told, the standards commission resolved 369 discipline cases in the 2024-25 fiscal year, which suggests that the problem of misconduct is not negligible in Florida. 

One would hope that no officers in Florida would be as untrained and uncontrolled as the killers in Minneapolis seemed to be. 

An early lesson

But it has happened here. In December 1979, a gang of at least six Miami-Dade public officers fatally beat a Black motorist, Arthur McDuffie, after what they said was a high-speed chase. Five were tried but acquitted of charges including manslaughter and evidence tampering. The acquittal by an all-white male jury in Tampa, where the trial had been moved, ignited riots in parts of Miami that took at least 18 lives. 

It was an early lesson, though hardly the last, in the urgency of strict police discipline and training. SB 1544 erodes decades of progress in exposing law enforcement misconduct. There have also been fatalities in the prison system. 

The Senate bill has one more committee to clear after its approval by the Criminal Justice Committee, 6-1, on Feb. 2. The House bill has sailed through several subcommittees with minimal resistance and zipped through the Judiciary Committee Monday, its last stop before the House floor, in barely five minutes with no debate and no votes against it. 

The bills amend the existing “Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights” in a second major respect: An investigation that doesn’t lead to discipline must not be used held against an officer’s promotion, raise “or any other commendation.”  

In effect, that entitles an officer to promotion no matter how many minor complaints might clutter his or her record, or still be pending, to alert supervisors of possible unsuitability.

“In many instances,” warns a document distributed to the Senate committee, “a violation of policy is determined to be not sustained because there is conflicting evidence such as ‘he said, she said’ in a harassment or excessive use of force complaint. If there is a succession of these not-sustained investigations, a sheriff or chief may currently require remedial action or take some other non-disciplinary action to address what appears to be a pattern even though no discipline is imposed…Under the bill, however, the same investigation would prohibit a sheriff or chief from denying a promotion, a raise, or any other recommendation.”

Void of silence for survivors

That document, apparently from the Florida Police Chiefs Association, irritated Sen. Jason Pizzo, an independent from Hollywood and the sponsor of SB 1544. At the Criminal Justice Committee’s hearing, he complained that everyone else on the panel had received a copy but he hadn’t.

“Do you think that every single complaint rises to the level of investigation?,” he challenged the lobbyists for sheriffs and police chiefs who oppose the bill.  

Rudeness complaints, according to the document, “are typically addressed by a supervisor who will meet with the officer about the complaint and decide whether the matter is resolved or further investigation is necessary.” The language in SB 1544 could shut that process down.

“If a female complains that she had been sexually propositioned by an officer and is afraid of signing a complaint under oath, but there are no witnesses and no video, there would be no basis to investigate the officer on this complaint,” the handout said.  

The Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) and the Police Benevolent Association (PBA) are the force behind the bill. The Police Chiefs Association and the Florida Sheriffs Association oppose it. The state prison system, which has a major stake in the issue, hasn’t been heard from, at least not publicly.

It is more than just another labor-management dispute. The public interest is at risk. 

“This overturns 20 years of progress,” said Robin Graber, a lobbyist for the Florida Council Against Sexual Violence, during the Feb. 2 hearing. Citing several documented cases of sexual assault, he said the survivors would not have had corroborating evidence before their complaints led to investigations. 

“This is really going to create a void of silence for survivors,” he warned. 

“Difficulties may be encountered in obtaining a written complaint under oath,” remarked a Senate staff report, “and there is the separate issue of obtaining corroborating evidence if a sworn written complaint cannot be obtained. The bill raises questions as to what constitutes corroborating evidence.”

The staff report also noted—as emphasized by the chiefs and the sheriffs—that national standards for law enforcement accreditation require an agency to provide in writing for “all complaints against an agency or its employees to be investigated.”  That includes anonymous ones. 

PBA and FOP lobbyists

Florida’s hot line for child and vulnerable adult abuse allows anonymous complaints. The legislation does not provide any exception for that. This could mean that police supervisors would not be able to act on a referral from the Department of Children and Families if it refers to a protected officer unless DCF already has corroborating evidence.  

The FOP and PBA lobbyists registered in support of the bill waived their opportunity to address the Senate committee. They already had the votes. It was 6-1, with only vice chairman Carlos Guillermo Smith, D-Orlando, voting no. The police lobbies also passed up their opportunity to speak when the House Judiciary committee heard the bill Monday.

“Heard” isn’t quite the right word. The sponsor, Rep. Tom Fabricio, R-Miami Lakes, took only moments to describe the part about sworn complaints and didn’t mention how it would grease promotions. The whole process took barely three minutes.

The police enjoy broad support in a Legislature that is deeply hostile to other public employee unions.  

Of the two police organizations, the PBA is by far the more active force in Florida campaigns. Department of State records indicate that various PBA components spent $1,264,193 on politics during the 2023-2024 campaign cycle. That includes $80,600 to the Republican Party, $15,000 to Friends of (Senate President) Ben Albritton and $50,000 to the Florida Freedom Fund, which is Gov. Ron DeSantis’ political slush fund.

The PBA’s political spending for the 2026 election amounts so far to $65,000.  While it contributes to some individual Democratic legislators, it supports many more Republicans and leans heavily to that party. 

Pizzo, the Senate sponsor of SB 1544, quit the Democratic Party in mid-session last year, announcing soon after that he would run for governor this year as an independent. However, he’s not one of the 40 people who have filed for the office, including ten others without party affiliation. He didn’t respond to the Florida Trident’s email and phone call asking about that and why he’s sponsoring SB 1544.

There was also no response when we emailed the PBA and FOP lobbyists to ask for particular cases in which officers had been treated unfairly because of anonymous complaints or wrongly denied promotion because of pending investigations.

The staff reports prepared for the House and Senate committees contained no such evidence either. 

It would be naïve to assume that police and correctional officers have never been disciplined unjustly in Florida. But the Legislature ought to have better reasons than it has heard to do what it seems about to do. 

This article first appeared on Florida Trident and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.