My name is _____ and I am here today to speak in support of Taylor Biro remaining on the Citizens’ Police Review Board.
Taylor Biro is incredibly well-qualified to be on the CPRB. She has been responsible for training hundreds of officers on trauma-informed policing, co-authored a part of a statewide law requiring officers to be trauma-informed and culturally responsive, and wrote the curriculum that FDLE uses on trauma related to sexual violence. If Biro is not qualified to be on the CPRB, I don’t know who is.
Furthermore, Biro brings a perspective to the board that is shared by thousands across our community. If the CPRB is to reflect the citizens of Tallahassee, Biro must stay on the board.
The CPRB is supposed to be a space for the Citizens of Tallahassee to make recommendations regarding TPD policies and procedures. It’s a space where the people get to tell the police what we think they should do. As such the Police Benevolent Association has no place making any statement about the suitability of the people appointed to review the police. People in power, like the police, should not get to decide who gets to review them. When they do, we call that corruption.
The recent PBA’s call for Biro’s removal from the CPRB makes it clear that the police want the board that reviews them to be stacked with members who do not raise critical questions about how to make policing less bad. The police would prefer a CPRB full of people who see nothing wrong with the current status of policing. Such a board would fail to provide even the slightest modicum of citizen oversight and would instead function as a bulwark protecting the police from legitimate concerns raised by everyday people.
After TPD officers murdered three civilians in early 2020 thousands of Tallahasseeans took to the streets demanding community control of the police through a democratically-elected Civilian Police Accountability Council. Such a council would put oversight of the police in the hands of everyday people, the people the police swear to protect and serve. Rather than implementing a CPAC which could hire and fire the police chief, control the police department’s budget, and hold killer cops accountable; this commission created a weak, toothless review board that can’t do anything more than make policy recommendations.
The controversy resulting from Dianne Williams-Cox’s statement at the October 12 Commission meeting highlights the pressing need for true community control of the police in Tallahassee. If the City refuses to implement a truly democratic Civilian Police Accountability Council, then the least this Commission needs to do is support the independent work of the CPRB in every way it can. If the CPRB asks for an expanded scope of authority, this Commission needs to grant them the authority they ask for. Most importantly City Commissioners should not interfere with the workings of the CPRB.
The fact that Commissioner Williams-Cox called into question an appointed CPRB members’ position on that board underscores her utter lack of commitment to participatory democracy. That the public controversy arose after Commissioner Williams-Cox publicly mis-represented a sticker that Ms. Biro has had on her water bottle for years, calls into question Williams-Cox’s commitment to truth.
Furthermore the fact that Ms. Biro has received death threats in the wake of Williams-Cox’s statement, calls into question her commitment to the safety and well-being of the citizens she alleges to represent. We cannot depend on politicians to keep us safe. We cannot rely on the police to keep us safe. We keep us safe.
PUBLIC COMMENT for City Commission Meeting
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