5/9/18
By: Ashley Reese
Source: Jezebel
Civil rights groups—including the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, American Civil Liberties Union, Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, and Human Rights Watch—signed a joint letter opposing the bill.
From the letter: Extending hate crimes protections to law enforcement officers is a profoundly inappropriate and misguided proposal for several reasons. First, police already have substantial protections under federal and state law, rendering this bill superfluous. Second, hate crimes laws are intended to extend protection to historically persecuted groups that have experienced a history of systemic discrimination based on a personal characteristic, such as race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, and disability; law enforcement officers are not a historically persecuted group. Third, this bill signals that there is a “war on police,” which is not only untrue, but an unhelpful and dangerous narrative to uplift.
Read the full article here.
