ORLANDO, Fla. — The proposed “Tyre Sampson Act” Florida lawmakers are considering right now in Tallahassee would enhance safety regulations for amusement rides, but another piece of legislation attached to that bill would conceal public records about amusement ride investigations, for an undetermined amount of time. 

Senate Bill 904, which would take effect simultaneously along with the Tyre Sampson Act, would seal those records from members of the public “until such time as the investigation is completed or ceases to be active.” That vague time frame is what’s most concerning about the bill for media law attorney Catherine Cameron, a professor at Stetson University’s College of Law.

“The one sort of worrying thing about language that says ‘while the investigation is pending,’ which is what this bill actually says, is that sometimes investigations go on for years,” Cameron said. “If the media or the public can’t get access to those records, they don’t really know what happened.”

Cameron said it’s not unprecedented for states to exempt investigatory records from public access: in fact, she says, most states do so within the criminal realm. 

“When there’s a criminal investigation by police, as long as the investigation is ongoing, most states exempt that from public access,” Cameron said. The general rationale is that if members of the news media and public can access those kinds of records, it might compromise the criminal investigation.

“Oftentimes, you have a suspect that you’re trying to identify, and only they know the information of exactly what the crime scene looked like,” Cameron said. “So you don’t want that information to get out, because you want to be able to identify [the suspect].”

To Cameron, that rationale makes sense in the context of criminal investigations. But when it comes to civil investigations, like the one Florida’s Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (FDACS) conducted into last year’s Orlando FreeFall tragedy, she’s not so sure. 

“I am struggling to understand why the agriculture department itself wants [records] to be confidential, other than to keep a media or a public firestorm from going on until a final determination is made,” Cameron said.

State Senator Geraldine Thompson (D-Orlando), who’s spearheading both pieces of ride safety legislation, previously told Spectrum News that SB 904 is meant to discourage preliminary assumptions about who’s to blame whenever a serious incident occurs.

“You don’t want to make assumptions until you have completed the investigation. Or to assign liability or culpability until the investigation is finished,” Thompson told Spectrum News. “And that’s all that triggered this.”

But for Cameron, it’s a “really tough call” to decide to conceal public records about investigations that aren’t criminal in nature. FDACS does not have the authority to pursue criminal charges in amusement ride incidents, but local authorities still could: earlier this month, the Orange County Sheriff’s Office told Spectrum News no determinations about criminal charges had yet been made.

Cameron said the agriculture department’s swift, transparent approach to releasing investigatory records last year helped the public recognize and address gaps in Florida’s current amusement ride regulations.

“Luckily, with the accident that we had last year, we had pretty good information about what went wrong, and within a timeframe that people are still interested and we can make changes,” Cameron said. “And that’s why we have these bills.”

But in the future, delaying public access to such records could halt more progress: “The longer it goes on, the less interest there is … and therefore, the less impact you’re gonna have on changing anything to make life better,” Cameron said.

‘Beyond the curtain’ of the amusement ride industry

In the thirty years he’s spent working in the amusement and attractions industry, operational safety consultant Brian Avery says he’s only seen two rides completely dismantled after serious incidents when somebody was either killed or seriously injured: the Verruckt waterslide in Kansas City and, now, the Orlando FreeFall. 

Formerly known as the world’s tallest waterslide, the Verruckt was demolished in 2018, two years after a 10-year-old boy was decapitated and killed. The Orlando FreeFall, a 450-foot drop tower ride, was also described as the tallest ride of its kind when it opened in January of last year; just three months later, 14-year-old Tyre Sampson fell from the ride to his death. 

Avery, a University of Florida faculty member lecturing on safety and risk management, believes the agriculture department’s transparent approach to releasing ongoing findings from its investigation was a key factor to the FreeFall coming down.

“I do believe because of the transparency of the findings, and the outcry from the public, it was just deemed understood by all – the best measures moving forward would be to decommission this ride, and/or dismantle it, move on from there, and try to heal,” Avery said.

Now, Avery’s concerned about SB 904’s proposed public records exemption, which he says could limit future progress to Florida’s amusement ride safety standards and oversight.

“I am really concerned that we would lose that potential opportunity for transparency,” Avery said. “I think it reduces the opportunity to learn valuable lessons, if there is another incident of a similar nature or very different moving forward.”

Less than a month into the state’s investigation of the FreeFall tragedy last year, FDACS released a copy of a commissioned engineering report. That report revealed the ride’s sensors for two specific seats – including Sampson’s – had been manipulated, so that the FreeFall would still operate even if the harnesses on those seats did not fully latch over a passenger’s body. 

Avery says that kind of transparency benefits not only the general public interest, but also the amusement ride industry itself. If other ride owners, operators and manufacturers are made aware of specific problems quickly, they can then audit their own rides, devices and operating procedures – potentially mitigating more future tragedies. 

Otherwise, “they’re lacking the opportunity, at that point, to reach out and ask very specific questions that might be immediate in nature…so that we can prevent any other similar incidents at other places throughout the United States and abroad,” Avery said.

Transparency about amusement ride incidents is especially critical, Avery says, because it’s an industry that doesn’t tend to be particularly transparent. There is no centralized national database tracking who owns/operates, purchases, resells and/or repurposes amusement rides and devices, he said.

That means a ride like the Orlando FreeFall could potentially reappear – in some form – somewhere else down the line, although Avery says that’s more common for temporary rides that frequently move between carnivals and fairs.

“It’s more difficult to repurpose a permanent ride. It’s more obvious when a permanent ride is coming down,” Avery said. “But it is very plausible that a permanent ride could be repurposed elsewhere.”

And the lack of any reliable data about who buys, sells and builds amusement rides – and where – means such a transformation wouldn’t be easily detected.

“It could be reimagined, it could be renamed, it could be repainted. It could be, theoretically, re-engineered in some capacity, and then rebuilt elsewhere,” Avery said. “These rides can surprise you, in the sense that the drop tower could look nothing like what it did in its current form, if it is rebuilt somewhere else.”

Although Avery is worried about SB 904, he says he’s generally pleased with the Tyre Sampson Act, SB 902, which creates new safeguards and allows FDACS to keep a closer eye on amusement ride protocols. 

Avery does wish SB 902 went even further in some aspects: for example, he wishes the bill’s language would apply to all rides, not just rides erected after July 2023, as it’s currently written. Still, he calls it a “solid bill,” and says Florida’s made a lot of progress in the last year.

“This gave everyone an opportunity to kind of see beyond the curtain in the amusement industry – to how these amusement rides and devices are inspected, how they’re maintained, how they’re operated,” Avery said.

Although SB 904 would significantly reduce transparency for amusement ride investigations, it wouldn’t do so permanently. Under Florida law, a public records exemption can only last for five years before it must be reinstated, said Cameron, the media law attorney.

Still, Cameron says, public records exemptions can majorly impact the public’s ability to understand and hold government agencies accountable. 

“Anytime you exempt, or take records out of the public sphere, you interfere with the media and the public’s ability to have oversight of government. And that is the cornerstone of democracy,” Cameron said.