Recent editorials from Florida newspapers:
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Jan. 20
The Sarasota Herald-Tribune on President Joe Biden’s inauguration:
Last November more than 5.6 million people in Florida voted to re-elect President Donald Trump; meanwhile, nearly 5.3 million more chose to vote for Trump’s opponent, Joe Biden.
So after an election that close in our state, it’s far too much to ask all Floridians to have the same set of emotions today when now-President-elect Biden is formally sworn in as America’s 46th president.
That simply will not happen today.
But is it too much to ask for all Floridians to share one common goal throughout Inauguration Day?
It is too much to ask that we all share an unflinching desire to ensure that a peaceful transition of power in Washington, D.C., today is matched by calm streets and tempered passions in the communities across our state, too?
We don’t believe that is too much to ask.
And we do believe that will happen today.
We believe that we Floridians will live up to the responsibilities that this important day –one that comes during a critical and undeniably volatile period in our nation – will demand us to meet throughout the hours ahead.
We believe that we Floridians – regardless of how millions of us voted or the myriad of ways we differ in how we see our country and its proper direction – will rise to the occasion today and keep those differences in proper and peaceful perspective.
We believe that we Floridians will show today that while we will never be of one mind, we will always become one Florida when the moment requires us to show such unity.
And we believe that we Floridians will embrace this opportunity to show others that during a time when so many are pleading for our country to start moving beyond our stormy recent past, we are in fact already on that path forward.
Today a new president takes the reins of leading our country.
Let’s also make it a day remembered for how our state lead the way for our country, too.
Online: https://www.heraldtribune.com
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Jan. 17
The Palm Beach Post on a bill that would allow the state government to intervene in city police budgets:
Stop us if you’ve heard this before: Florida legislators, with the backing of Gov. Ron DeSantis, are pushing another bill that undermines the ability of municipalities to set their own local policies. This latest assault on “home rule” involves the budgets city governments set for police. If a resident doesn’t like a budget, the state can intervene and change it.
The bill’s intent is to overturn efforts to “defund” the police - that is, shifting some of a police budget to social service agencies better equipped to handle the many mental-health situations that police are now expected to deal with. The bill would enable any resident - a community gadfly, a disgruntled cop or a city commissioner on the wrong side of the vote - to petition the governor to overturn the approved budget.
Good luck if your city commission, after a series of debates and public hearings, decided to try dispatching mental-health professionals, rather than armed officers, to certain kinds of calls involving obviously disoriented people. Under House Bill 1 and Senate Bill 484, the governor and the Florida Cabinet could make a final decision on the challenged budget and stop the experiment in its tracks.
“This is the evisceration of home rule on steroids,” West Palm Beach Mayor Keith James told the Post Editorial Board. “What concerns me is there may be very legitimate reasons for cutting a police budget, as in we don’t have the revenues.”
For example, “COVID put a $10 million dent in our budget,” James said. “Now, we were able to move some things around and not have to make a cut in our public safety budget. But who knows what may happen in subsequent years?”
State pre-emption of local ordinances aren’t new, but they continue to be a huge problem. From Palm Beach to Key West, municipalities have watched local regulations of gun ranges, plastic bags and development rules be overturned by state lawmakers eager to please corporate interests that oppose the will of local communities.
This latest home-rule infringement has been written into legislation that initially was crafted last summer amid the protests against police brutality stemming from the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. When filed last summer, the bill contained prohibitions against disorderly and violent assembly, destroying monuments and obstructing roadways. Its anti-riot sentiment rose to the point of freeing motorists from any legal liability for injury or death caused by “fleeing for safety from a mob.”
The latest version takes the same approach to addressing violent protests, but the emphasis has taken a curious shift away from last summer’s protests since the mob violence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
Civil rights advocates and Democratic legislators have correctly criticized both versions of the legislation as a threat to constitutional rights. High among their concerns is that the state would mete out penalties differently based on the race and ethnicity of the offender.
The first version of the bill gave the state the power to prohibit awarding grants and aid to local governments that cut law-enforcement budgets. That threat is bad enough, but this latest move is much worse. If approved by the Florida Legislature and signed into law by the governor, city leaders will face state-imposed political pushbacks that could disrupt the municipal budget process.
“I take public safety very, very seriously,” James said. “But I also recognize that there are competing factors that go into establishing a budget. If there is, say, a cut to the budget, it may not be politically oriented. We get federal grants. If they dry up and that revenue is gone, we may have to adjust the police budget.”
Any of those adjustments could now be second-guessed and reversed, thanks to the political aims of this bill’s sponsors, who have seized on the potency of opposing the “defund the police” slogan, which has been widely misused and misconstrued to mean a wholesale stripping of law-enforcement capabilities.
In their zeal to show their passion for law and order, the backers of this bill will be undermining the way mayors and city commissioners have traditionally provided direction, resources and oversight to local law enforcement.
“It’s an overreach,” said Richard Radcliffe, executive director of The Palm Beach County League of Cities. “You’re going into somebody’s budget without the information, the history or the assessments of where the money needs to be spent. I’m choosing my words carefully here: It’s not a good precedent.”
Gov. DeSantis and Republican lawmakers love to say that government is best when it is closest to the people - until the results don’t fit their agenda. The pre-emption provision in HB 1 and SB 484 is one more example of the political hypocrisy coming out of our state capitol.
Online: https://www.palmbeachpost.com
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Jan. 16
The Daytona Beach News Journal on the need for independent reviews of convictions relying on disproven evidence:
Amanda Brumfield said she kept waiting for someone to realize that she had been wrongfully convicted. She would spend nearly nine years in prison before being freed.
In 2011, Brumfield faced charges in Orange County that included first-degree murder in the death of 1-year-old Olivia Garcia, her goddaughter. Brumfield, the estranged daughter of Oscar-winning actor Billy Bob Thornton, was accused of abusing Olivia so savagely that she ended up with a 3.5 inch fracture at the base of her skull. The prosecution claimed that Brumfield (who was babysitting Olivia overnight) let her lapse into unconsciousness and die.
Scientific experts for the prosecution rebutted Brumfield’s story: That Olivia fell a short distance after crawling up on the side of the playpen where she was supposed to be sleeping, and that she was playful as Brumfield fed her a banana, painted her nails and put her to sleep.
What the jury didn’t hear: Testimony about numerous studies showing that infants could suffer fatal injuries in seemingly minor falls and appear alert for hours before succumbing. Shortly after she was arrested, Brumfield said, she was contacted by experts who offered to testify on her behalf - but says her defense attorneys never followed up.
Jurors found Brumfield guilty of aggravated manslaughter. The young mother, with a husband and two girls of her own, was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
“I kept waiting for that moment when someone would realize they were wrong,” Brumfield said (last week) in a live-streamed discussion of her case. “Then (I) realized … nobody was going to say that.”
Nobody, that is, until the Innocence Project of Florida looked at her case. Allied with the Center for Integrity in Forensic Sciences, they challenged Brumfield’s conviction - pointing out that bad forensic evidence has put numerous women behind bars for child abuse when a more thorough review of the evidence suggested they were innocent.
The Innocence Project of Florida named Brumfield as one of the “Florida Five,” clients had strong enough claims to innocence that they should be freed immediately, and fought to have their evidence presented in court. But just before a hearing in September, the state offered Brumfield a deal: She could walk free immediately - but she’d have to give up her appeals.
She took the deal. How could she refuse? Her choices were to be reunited with her husband and daughters - now 19 and 20 - or endure a fight that could drag on for years. The bargain, unfortunately, means Floridians will never know for sure whether Brumfield was wrongly convicted, though Gov. Ron DeSantis should consider clemency in her case.
Florida needs to do a better job of re-examining dubious convictions and seeking justice. That holds true in cases of intentional misconduct, where police and prosecutors hide evidence or coax witnesses to lie, as well cases like Brumfield’s that may have been warped by technical testimony from medical examiners, forensic scientists and others.
Juries find these witnesses highly credible. But in some areas, the scientific basis for that evidence has subsequently crumbled away.
Florida officials should launch independent reviews of convictions that rely on since-disproven evidence. That’s the only way to ensure that justice is finally done - not just for people like Brumfield, but for those yet to face the nightmare of being falsely accused.
Online: https://www.news-journalonline.com
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