Yesterday, at the Tampa Citizens Review Board (“CRB”) monthly meeting, the Policing Project at New York University School of Law released its report summarizing the results of the CRB community survey on the practices and performance of the Tampa Police Department (“TPD”).

The CRB’s anonymous survey was designed to collect information and give constructive feedback on the public’s experiences with the TPD. The survey was available to the Tampa Bay community from October 30, 2017 to March 16, 2018. In gathering community feedback, the CRB and Policing Project contacted more than 150 Tampa-area businesses, city agencies, academic institutions, bar associations, and news outlets, as well as organizations including religious, civil rights, and community-based, to ask for their help in getting the word out and participating in the survey.

601 individuals completed the survey. This is a comparable to the number of returned surveys from Los Angeles and Camden, where the Policing Project also conducted community surveys. In addition, nearly 600 written comments were submitted in response to questions that asked respondents to further elaborate on their experiences with TPD.

The survey yielded many interesting results, but perhaps chief among them was a clear list of issues of importance that the community felt the CRB should examine, including:

Community Policing,
Body Cameras,
Interactions with Individuals with Mental Illness,
Use of Force, and
Bias Training.

The results from the survey highlighted issues of importance to the Tampa community. Having a more thorough understanding of the community’s priorities and concerns around policing will help shape the CRB’s focus and lead to recommendations for policy changes, where appropriate. Full results are available on the Policing Project’s website, www.PolicingProject.org/tampa.

Additional inquiries may be made during public comments at the CRB’s monthly meeting, the fourth Tuesday of each month, at 6:00 PM, at City Hall, 3rd Floor, 315 E. Kennedy Blvd., Tampa, FL, 33602. To view the CRB’s monthly agenda, visit its website, https://www.tampagov.net/info/citizens-review-board-agenda.

Note: We updated the report in April 2018. This dispatch features the newest version of the report.