The release of racist, sexist, and homophobic emails primarily authored by two Miami Beach police officers (who have since left the Police Department), further exposes the level of bigotry and violent mentality endemic within the Department. The news regarding the emails also occurred as the City prepares for Urban Beach Weekend, an annual Memorial Day celebration similar to Ultra Music Festival  and Pride that attracts thousands of mostly young black adults.

For several years, the ACLU has been meeting with Miami Beach police officers and other city officials to discuss the complaints from visitors and residents about the City’s over-policing during that weekend – heightened presence of police officers everywhere, use of dogs, flood lights, and DUI checkpoints which are almost never used any other weekend.  Raymond Martinez, the former police chief, even sat in on some of those meetings and acted as if he saw no problem with his department’s treatment of black youth.  All the while, he was one of the main recipients of these emails.  Whether receiving these emails caused him chagrin or amusement, we know for certain that, as the head cop in charge, he did absolutely nothing to end this behavior or to punish those who were in direct violation of departmental policies.   

While the City attempts to characterize this scandal as the misbehavior of a few bad apples, the current Police Chief, Dan Oates, has acknowledged that the culture of intolerance within the Department simply is unsustainable – at least under his watch.  The problem, unfortunately, is that a change in leadership alone is insufficient in terms of producing a solution to the culture of insensitivity and racial profiling within the Miami Beach Police Department.  These police officers behave the way they do because our legal system protects them. Cops regularly are immune from liability and prosecution even when their behavior is unlawful, and they use this “free pass” to wield all types of violence against innocent civilians.  For example, in March, State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle decided not to charge any of the officers involved in the fatal shooting death of a suspect, 22-year-old Raymond Herisse, during the 2011 Urban Beach Weekend, even though the cascade of bullets was excessive and endangered the lives of numerous people, including some law enforcement officers.

We eventually have to tackle the uncomfortable question of why law enforcement attracts employees who are so discriminatory in their behavior, brutal in their treatment of minority communities, and depraved of compassion.  Miami Beach police officers of course are not alone in their deviant behavior.  Just about 30 miles north, the Fort Lauderdale Police Department has been dealing with its own scandals – one of the most recent being the release of a video trailer produced by cops that shows images of black men being attacked by dogs, white hoods in a seeming reference to the KKK, and a theme that the cops are there to protect society against the “Niggers.”  Then there was the release of similar emails and videos by the Ferguson, Missouri Police Department, the deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of police in Baltimore and South Carolina, and the tragedies continue.  .  Who, then, can we really trust to protect our communities?

The days when wearing a badge was enough to command respect are over.  The abhorrent behavior of police officers around the country continues to ruin the reputation of even the good cops out there who entered this profession for the right reasons.  Some of these “good cops,” however, remain silent and stand by while their colleagues denigrate the uniform; and that group includes Black, Hispanic, and other officers of color who do not protest this type of behavior and, as in the case of Miami Beach, are actually the ones engaging and otherwise encouraging such conduct.

Law enforcement has a very long way to go towards improving its relationship with the public, especially minority communities.  And we, the public, as the supposed beneficiaries of law enforcement’s existence, need to step up our oversight and demands, and perhaps learn how to better police ourselves to create the safe communities in which we want to live.

By Nusrat Choudhury, Staff Attorney, ACLU's Racial Justice Program

The Tampa Bay Times' recent disclosure that police are targeting Blacks who ride bicycles — including children as young as three years old — for dramatically high rates of stops and searches is the latest piece in the nationwide debate about racial profiling that has followed the police-involved deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, and countless others.

Communities across the country are connecting the deluge of incidents in which police use force against Blacks (or, as in Gray's case, show gross disregard for Black life) to everyday interactions in which police stop, frisk, and search Blacks and Latinos because of their race, rather than evidence of wrongdoing — a practice well-documented in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Ferguson. The latest reports from Tampa underscore just how little progress has been made in rooting out racial profiling and how the routine over policing of communities of color can lead to interactions that tragically devolve into the use of force.

The Tampa Bay Times reviewed 12 years of data on civil traffic citations in Hillsborough County, Florida, and discovered that the Tampa Police Department issues an astronomically high number of bike tickets, overwhelmingly to Blacks. From 2013 to 2015, Tampa police wrote more than 10,000 bike tickets and issued 79 percent of them to Blacks — even though Blacks comprise only 26 percent of the Tampa population.

In the past three years, Tampa police wrote more bike tickets than thecombined total number of tickets issued in four of the five largest Florida cities. Those targeted, the paper found, are concentrated in Tampa's poor Black communities.

Equally disturbing is the conduct that police are choosing to sanction, including the ticketing of children. ACLU review of the data shows that in 2014, Tampa police issued 70 tickets for "bike riding w/no hands" — all but three went to Blacks. During the 12-year period studied, at least 142 bike tickets were issued to kids aged 15 and under, including children as young as three. All but 9 of these children are Black or Hispanic.

Even when Tampa police ticketed older Blacks, the paper discovered troubling circumstances.  Alphonso Lee King was stopped by police and had his bicycle confiscated because the 56-year-old could not provide a receipt to prove the bike was his. These tickets come with serious consequences, including driver's license suspensions and reports to collection agencies when people — even children as young as 11 years old — cannot afford to pay. As the Department of Justice's investigative report on the Ferguson Police Department demonstrated, the indebtedness that comes from these hefty fines can shatter the lives of poor people, ensaring them in a cycle of indebtedness almost impossible to avoid.

Tampa's outgoing police chief claims that bike tickets are issued to people allegedly involved in criminal activity and that criminals now rely principally on bikes for transportation. These arguments are severely undercut by the Tampa Bay Times' finding that only 20 percent of the adults ticketed in 2014 were even arrested for criminal activity — usually a drug charge — in the course of the bike stop.

Tampa police should be less defensive and consider the data and stories in the context of today's debates about the over policing of communities of color and our national history of racial profiling. The city's police should also remember that it isn't the first department to come under scrutiny for disproportionately targeting Black people for bicycle stops.

In 2002, the ACLU of Michigan sued the Eastpointe Police Department for discrimination on behalf of 22 kids who had been stopped while riding bikes, questioned, and searched. Between 1995 and 1998, police had stopped more than 100 Black children aged 11 to 18 on their bikes, but only 40 white cyclists. Police had confiscated and auctioned off some of the plaintiffs' bicycles.

And why did police target Black kids on bikes in Eastpointe?

The lawsuit revealed that the city police chief had issued a memorandum that explicitly instructed police officers to investigate any Black youth riding through the city — damning evidence of race-based targeting without any reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing, which the Fourth Amendment requires. The case was ultimately settled after a federal court ruled that there was enough evidence of racial discrimination and illegal searches to take the case to a jury trial.

Even today, Tampa is not alone in reports that police are profiling Black kids on bicycles. Reports out of Fort Lauderdale and Boston also suggest a problem. Boston resident Modesto Sanchez was stopped and frisked as a teen when riding on a bike on his own street. The police officer explained, "People in your hood ride bikes to shoot people," and accused Sanchez of looking "suspicious."

Walter Scott and Freddie Gray died after initial interactions with the police over routine activity — such as driving a car with a broken taillight or making eye contact and then running away from bike cops — escalated with tragic results. By heightening the likelihood that people of color will face a police interaction in the first place, racial profiling in any form — whether of pedestrians, bikers, or drivers — is one critical reason why people of color are more likely to become victims of police violence across America.

Thanks to data published by Hillsborough County, Tampa has information suggesting racialized policing that other cities lack. The mayor and incoming police chief of Tampa should view this data and community calls for reform as an opportunity to make positive changes — a chance to ensure that steps are taken before one tragic incident lights a fuse transforming Tampa into the next Ferguson or Baltimore.

The Tampa Police Department has agreed to let Department of Justice Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) review its program. But that is not enough. Neither the police nor COPS has made clear whether that review will include an investigation into racial profiling and civil rights violations — and that is what needs to happen.

The Tampa Police Department should also accept the invitation of civil rights groups and faith leaders to discuss bicycle enforcement and reforms to address racial disparities in policing. And it should stop issuing bicycle tickets until an investigation identifies the source of the problem, to prevent the needless issuance of tickets for minor infractions.

Last week, I attended a Town Hall in Tampa that was convened by Attorney Barry Cohen to address race relations and law enforcement. There was a panel of 14 individuals that included judges, attorneys, the Public Defender, educators, the Tampa Police Department, the Sheriff’s office, parents, and a youth.  There were over 200 people in attendance representing a cross-section of Tampa and Hillsborough.

The conversation was very timely, in light of the recent publication of a report showing that blacks are being disproportionately over-policed in Tampa. Attendees shared stories of their experiences with law enforcement, judges, the school system, the criminal justice system, and the devastation to communities due to the intersection of race and poverty, and the interface with law enforcement and the courts.

The stories made it abundantly clear that there is lack of trust of law enforcement and a lack of respect between law enforcement and the community, particularly the youth.  Our young people are hurting and are in need of support, parenting, counseling, recreational activities, and rehabilitative programs.

The stories shared made it clear that systems are currently failing our children. I heard painful stories of parents with children in the juvenile justice system and criminal justice system.  I heard of a husband being ripped from his family with a life sentence due to possession of a gun. I heard about corruption among law enforcement and prosecutors who have lied and the irreparable damage this can cause in young people’s lives.

Repeatedly, individuals expressed concern about the bicycle stops in Tampa. They called for the Tampa Police Department to suspend the bicycle stops and for DOJ to investigate the practices of Tampa Police Department. We agree, and have convened a coalition of community groups calling for the same thing.

There were numerous solutions offered that included early childhood education (0-3 years), mentors, after school programs, real community policing, regular meetings with the Mayor and the community, regular meetings with the police and the community, gun buy back, the need for jobs for young people, greater involvement of the business sector in providing opportunities for employment.

Tampa Mayor, Bob Buckhorn, addressing the community.

Not everyone had a chance to speak but everyone who spoke was heard.  The question is what will happen from here.

For the longtime residents of Tampa, this is not new.  It has been said before.  They have been there and done that.  In light of what has happened in Ferguson and presently in Baltimore, there is urgency to find real solutions to address the underlying problems for long-term and systemic change.