Demings was the Orlando Police Department’s chief from 2007-2011, and she’d been on the force since the 1980s, working her way up. For most of the 2000s, I reported on Orlando’s city government and its police department. For lack of a better term, the OPD then was a shit show: violent, unaccountable, vindictive, absurdly moralistic.
Its vice squad – formed with other area law enforcement agencies but led by the OPD – hunted strip clubs and porn purveyors with gleeful zeal. In one famous episode, after I investigated the vice squad’s messy investigation into a predominantly Black strip club, the vice squad launched a racketeering investigation into my then-employer, Orlando Weekly.
That’s the police culture in which Demings was inculcated.
According to the Orlando Weekly, in April of 2007, when Demings was Deputy Chief, an off-duty officer working security at an Orlando nightclub pushed a woman down a flight of stairs which resulted in a broken ankle. He then lied about what happened to his fellow officers and Demings fought to have his punishment reduced to a one-day suspension.
The Orlando Weekly continues…
Here’s the part where I want you to remember Demings’s words: *When you fail to publicly admit that there is a problem, then it is extremely difficult to address the problem.
Demings would deny problems within her department and her reaction to those problems, defending her OPD in an op-ed to the Orlando Sentinel.
As the Orlando Weekly rightfully observe, Demings only seemed to start caring about police reform when it became needed to bolster her campaigns for congress and now her desire to be Biden’s VP pick.