Fraternal Order Of Police Lobbies For Hate Crime Law To Protect Cops
By V. Saxena, January 6, 2015.
The Fraternal Order of Police, which is a labor union that consists of over a quarter million upstanding officers from across the country, “is asking for the Congressional hate crimes statute to be expanded to include crimes against police officers,” reports Yahoo News.
Here’s a snippet from the official press release filed by the FOP:
Chuck Canterbury, National President of the Fraternal Order of Police, has called on Congress to expand the Federal hate crime laws to protect law enforcement officers and punish those who target these dedicated public servants.
“My thoughts and prayers over the past few weeks have been with the families of officers who were, with malice and forethought, gunned down just because they served as police officers,” Canterbury said. “Enough is enough! It’s time for Congress to do something to protect the men and women who protect us.”
The release goes on to argue that the type of ambush attack that occurred two weeks ago is motivated exclusively by hatred for the police. Yahoo News adds that “according to FBI statistics, about 21.7 percent of non-accidental law enforcement deaths since 2004 were ambush attacks.” This means that almost a quarter of all police deaths arise from pure hatred.
Note also that the hate crime law currently already covers crimes based on race, religion, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity and disability.
Another thing to keep in mind is that there are two camps that oppose this potential move.
First are conservatives who oppose any and all hate law legislation. For instance, the folks over at Police State USA argue that “all people should be treated equally in the eyes of the law,” and that “the federal government has no legitimate authority to create such laws”:
The U.S. Constitution — specifically Article 1, Section 8 — offers no mention of the federal government having the ability to prohibit crimes of violence between citizens for any reason. Crimes such as assault and murder are properly prohibited at the state-level and are enforced by state or local agencies — not the FBI. To broaden the scope of federal law enforcers is a mistake and a move toward more centralized authoritarianism.
Second are idiotic liberals like those over at Wonkette. They find the proposal to be absolutely hilarious, because apparently, the lives of blacks and women matter more than the lives of police officers, some of whom by the way happen to be black women:
Remember how we all laughed at pro-cop counter-protesters carrying “blue lives matter” signs and cops tweeting things like “cop lives matter,” and we figured it was so absurd, the people saying it had to mean it to be tongue in cheek? Evidently, the Fraternal Order of Police, a 300,000-member union, is demanding that violence against police officers be treated as a hate crime.
The lunatics then go on to make some asinine argument about how, LIKE, generating policies “simply by replacing words in sentences” makes no sense.
Basically, the morons at Wonkette use emotional posturing and juvenile antics to make a non-point point. The facts and statistics back up the FOP’s request, regardless of whether you support or oppose it. You need only browse through some recent headlines to see that the targeted shootings of police officers (and other public workers: here, here) is a legitimate issue.
With that said, the folks over at Police State USA deserve a lot of credit for putting up a valid argument against this move. Too bad the dingbats at Wonkette lack the reasoning capabilities to, LIKE, follow suit.
http://downtrend.com/vsaxena/fraternal-order-of-police-lobbies-for-hate-crime-law-to-protect-cops/
