5/10/18
By: Sarah Taylor
Source: The Blaze
Organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union, NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, and Human Rights Watch — among others — are calling for the bill to be struck down.
Several of these groups, in a statement, said, “Extending hate crimes protections to law enforcement officers is a profoundly inappropriate and misguided proposal for several reasons” because “police already have substantial protections under federal and state law, rendering this bill superfluous.”
Also, the groups say that hate crime laws are “intended to extend protection to historically persecuted groups that have experienced a history of systemic discrimination based on a personal characteristics, such as race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, and disability.”
“Law enforcement officers are not a historically persecuted group,” the statement continued.
“This bill signals that there is a ‘war on police,’ which is not only untrue, but an unhelpful and dangerous narrative to uplift,” the statement added.
The groups’ statement also noted that “divisive” bills of this type — “so-called ‘Blue Lives Matter’ bills” — only appear to be a “political response” to the civil rights’ groups push for police accountability “in the face of continued killings and assaults of unarmed African-Americans.”
The statement also warned that should this bill be passed, it will have a “negative impact” on relationships between law enforcement and the communities they serve.
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