Starting next year, first responders in Florida will have a new tool at their disposal to provide themselves space to do their jobs in public — and potentially obscure the sightlines of onlookers and devices.
Gov. Ron DeSantis has signed legislation (SB 184) enabling police, firefighters and paramedics to establish a 25-foot no-go zone around themselves. Anyone who enters the area to harass, impede or threaten them after receiving a warning will face up to 60 days in prison and a $500 fine.
It goes into effect Jan. 1.
SB 184 is the pet project of Hialeah Republican Rep. Alex Rizo, who has sponsored versions of the measure with varying distances — up to 30 feet in some — for several Sessions. The bill's Senate sponsor since 2023 has been Hialeah Gardens Republican Sen. Bryan Ávila, who this year originally proposed a 14-foot distance, which he explained is the length of an average car.
Twenty-five feet is the long-accepted reactionary gap for police — the distance officers must keep between themselves and a potential aggressor to respond to a sudden threat if the suspect's hands aren't visible.
Ávila said it's about keeping first responders safe in crowded, high-stress situations, such as during Spring Break in South Florida, where they and the people they're trying to help are at greater risk of harm.
"In some of these cases, you don't know … what people in the audience could potentially have on them. You don't know what was the reason or the rationale for the brawl or conflict, and you certainly don't know how many victims you have until you arrive on the scene," he said. "You're coming into a situation that is very tense, very up-tempo, and … if you don't stabilize it, it could really boil over into something bigger."
Critics of the measure, including a majority of Miami-Dade County Commissioners who voted against a 2021 resolution supporting it, view the restriction as a veiled attempt to stop citizens from filming cops who behave badly.
"It (could) create an additional impediment," West Palm Beach Democratic Sen. Bobby Powell said.
Orlando Democratic Rep. LaVon Bracy Davis noted that many recent anti-brutality changes in law enforcement would not have happened if citizens were unable to closely record law enforcement.
"The only reason we know what happened to George Floyd is because of a girl who was filming his murder close by," she said, adding that those supporting the change are "more concerned with the comfort of the police officer than it is with truth and justice."
Rizo and Ávila maintained throughout the bill's progress this year that nothing in its language precludes recording police. Ávila called doing so a "constitutionally permissible" action ahead of a final vote on the bill last month.
The bill passed 85-27 in the House and 39-1 in the Senate, with Democrats exclusively casting "no" votes.
But it garnered some support from the left side of the aisle, including Kissimmee Rep. Vic Torres, a retired New York City Transit detective, and Miami Sen. Jason Pizzo, a former prosecutor.
Pizzo suggested that 25 feet might not be enough in some cases and recommended that the bill allow on-site first responders to set the distance on a case-by-case basis. He noted that 25 feet would not have been enough after the June 2021 condo collapse in Surfside, nor would it have been sufficient after 9/11.
"That distance to get back is like a mile," he said. "This is reasonable, (but) I think we're going to have a lot of people saying, 'This is 25 feet,' (and refusing to move back more) when, for their own safety and their own good, 100 feet might have been more appropriate."
That said, Pizzo continued, the distance argument is emblematic of a broader need for police to wear body cameras, which studies have "empirically shown is (often) exculpatory to many law enforcement officers."
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