The Republican nominee for Florida’s 14th Congressional District said the board is redundant and unnecessary.
TAMPA, Fla. – The Republican nominee for the U.S. House of Representatives in Florida’s 14th Congressional District spoke before the Tampa City Council Thursday morning, voicing his opposition to a measure that would give an unelected board of citizens investigative and subpoena power.
“The Citizen Review Board is simply a terrible idea,” said James Judge. “It paves the way for the intrusion of privacy into the lives of Tampa’s residents. We can’t give an unelected board the broad power to investigate whatever it wants, with parameters that remain uncertain, and our men and women in law enforcement shouldn’t be subject to harassment by a deputized group of anti-police radicals.”
The Citizen Review Board was formed in 2016, but given broader powers after George Floyd, who was high on narcotics and attempting to pass counterfeit currency, died while resisting arrest. The board consists of members appointed by the mayor and the city council. The council is now trying to give the board subpoena and investigative powers over any police incident that it wants to investigate, especially police-involved shootings.
The measure would not grant subpoena powers over law enforcement, but rather over private citizens.
“This unelected board could be able to demand, at their discretion, that private citizens in their homes, turn over anything they desire, surveillance video, access to social media accounts, personal photos, their cell phones and more,” Judge said. “This idea is shockingly stupid. It’s something we would expect to see in Communist China, not in the United States of America, and as the chosen representative of more than 137,000 Republicans in the Tampa Bay area, including the city of Tampa, and as a Tampa business owner, I strongly condemn this effort and respectfully requested for the city council to prohibit this effort from moving forward.”
Judge says the board is not only dangerously unaccountable, but also unnecessary.
“None of this is necessary. We already have a series of checks and balances already in place. The Tampa Police Internal Affairs, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the State Attorney’s Office, the FBI, and more, all have the power and authority to conduct their own investigations.,” said Judge. “Not to mention, every police shooting is automatically reviewed. Citizens can already request all the information they want via the Sunshine Act and the Freedom of Information Act. The media also looks into questionable scenarios. The idea that a group of random people, none of whom are law enforcement experts, should be handed unrestricted subpoena power is absurd.”
Judge also says the Citizen Review Board is not aptly named.
“The government is literally made up of citizens,” said Judge. “The people advocating for the Citizen Review Board say the government cannot be trusted to do its job, and its solution is to create more government officials. None of this plan makes any sense at any level.”
Judge won his Aug. 23 primary election by 24 points, despite being outspent 10-to-one by his closest competitor.
He recently earned the recommendation of the Tampa Bay Times and has been endorsed by several high-profile local and national figures.
Those figures include Congressman Paul Gosar (R-AZ), retired Republican Congressman Ted Yoho, Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, Republican strategist Roger Stone, The Tampa Police Benevolent Association, Clearwater Mayor Frank Hibbard, the Community Patriots Tampa, Chris Chambers, a former Congressional candidate and community leader, and former SBA White House Deputy Chief Matt Becker, who previously ran for Congress against an incumbent Democrat in St. Petersburg.
About James Judge:
Judge, who publicly announced his run for Congress earlier this year, is the only Tampa Bay area native running in the race, having been born in Clearwater, Florida. Judge graduated from Eckerd College in St. Petersburg and served in the U.S. Coast Guard in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Additionally, he served in Kabul, Afghanistan as a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Defense from 2010 until 2011. He now owns Judge Public Relations, a Tampa-based PR firm and marketing agency with clients worldwide.
Judge is married to his wife Danielle, who is also a small business owner in Hillsborough County. The Judges are avid animal lovers and together, they have four dogs, three cats, two horses and 10 chickens. Judge is a proud member of the NRA, Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Legion. The Judges are also active members at Idlewild Baptist Church in Tampa.
