Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies

Ripe for vetoes

The governor should reject the Legislature's effort to give selective advantages to police and correctional officers under investigation. The bill could invite legal challenges in other cases.

The good cop-bad cop technique, as seen in real life as well as on TV, pits two skilled interrogators against one vulnerable suspect. One questioner is harsh, relentless. The other pretends to be sympathetic. Some people think it's unfair.

So, apparently, do the police themselves. They just persuaded the Legislature to forbid the practice. Only one interrogator per session is to be allowed.

But the ban applies only when police themselves, or correctional officers, are under investigation by their own agencies. Everyone else would be fair game for good cop-bad cop teams.

Despite the obvious hypocrisy, this sailed through the Legislature without a single dissenting vote. Yet at least some members had doubts. Among them was Sen. Rod Smith, D-Gainesville, a former state attorney.

"I remember asking a question, be careful of what you ask for; if this becomes the procedure, it might become the procedure for everybody," says Smith.

Indeed it could. Defense attorneys would be certain to attack the use of the practice in other cases on grounds of due process and equal protection under the law.

The bill would give police and correctional officers another significant privilege no one else has: the right to see complete investigative reports before imposition of discipline. Could this sabotage criminal investigations as well? That question apparently wasn't raised.

To pass such legislation, legislators had to be tone-deaf to recent history. One sponsor is a senator from Miami, which has had more than any city's share of rogue cops. In 1999, a death row inmate at Florida State Prison was beaten to death. Eight guards were charged criminally, but none was convicted.

Where lawmakers fell down, Gov. Jeb Bush should stand up - by vetoing this bad bill.

It is not necessarily a virtue to keep a promise - not when the promise was to sign into law something so deeply flawed as SB 626, which would delay the cleanup of the Everglades for seven years beyond 2006, the year to which Florida previously agreed in a federal district court settlement. District Judge William Hoeveler said last Friday he would not let the state out of its agreement. That should let Bush out of his promise, too.

At least three other anti-environmental bills deserve vetoes:

- SB 956, which prevents landowners from suing over contamination from nearby dry-cleaning plants if the owner of the offending site initiates a voluntary cleanup. The bill is either vague or silent on such important questions as how long the cleanup could take.

- SB 1660, the so-called "right to farm" legislation, which bars counties from regulating agricultural practices. There are places where no huge cattle feed lot should go; urban legislators who voted for this bill may have been present in the chamber, but their brains were out to lunch.

- CS 2042, aimed at preventing restoration of the Ocklawaha River by requiring the state to preserve the Kirkpatrick (formerly Rodman) Dam that was built for the abandoned Cross Florida Barge Canal. The Department of Environmental Protection recommended removal of the dam. The governor agreed, only to be stymied by the Legislature's refusal to appropriate funds. It's his move now, and that move should be a veto.