Perpetually down in the mouth because they are expected to be accountable whenever they beat, shoot or kill a member of the public, police officers in the United States will undoubtedly be buoyed up by legislation that has been passed in Louisiana. The bill, clearly serving to minimize and marginalize the "Black Lives Matter" movement, is entitled "Blue Lives Matter" and would classify any violent attack on police officers, firefighters, and EMS personnel a hate crime.
Louisiana State representative Lance harris had this to say about the bill:
“I certainly do think there is a need for it. If you’re going to have an extensive hate crime statute then we need to protect those that are out there protecting us on a daily basis,” Harris said. “There is a concerted effort in some areas to terrorize and attack police and I think this will go forward and stop that.”Not everyone agrees:
Anti-Defamation League Regional Director Allison Padilla-Goodman pointed out that crimes against police officers are already aggressively prosecuted under Louisiana law: “The bill confuses the purpose of the Hate Crimes Act and weakens its impact by adding more categories of people, who are already better protected under other laws.”In fact, the notion of a hate law for an occupational category weakens real hate laws, which were enacted for a particular purpose:
“Hate Crimes are designed to protect people’s most precious identity categories,” Padilla-Goodman said, “like race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disability, ethnicity, and gender identity. Proving the bias intent is very different for these categories than it is for the bias intent of a crime against a law enforcement officer.”As you will see in the following news report, something very similar to Louisiana's bill is now before Congress:
Just one more step, some would argue, in bringing the police state to full fruition.
The perfect environment for a President Trump.
ReplyDeleteHis praetorian guard awaits his arrival, Owen.
DeleteAs we're witnessing, virtually on a daily basis, what police are lacking today isn't additional protection but basic accountability.
ReplyDeleteIn officer school (60s) I wrote an essay about William Calley and the My Lai massacre in which I argued that Calley should have been sentenced to death. My argument was that he was an officer, not some draftee. He had chosen to seek a commission and the privileges and responsibilities that entailed, including the power to order his men to use lethal force. The responsibility to restrain such force was also his. The men who acted on his orders deserved a term of imprisonment but Calley, the directing force, was in a distinct category. He needed to be held to a higher standard and for the sake of discipline in an increasingly unruly and murderous military force that required that he be put to death.
I feel that police officers must also be held to a much higher standard. They seek the position. They seek and accept the power and responsibility that goes with it, including the power to use lethal force. When they wrongly use that force it's much worse than any other shooting because they do it in our name. They have a higher responsibility to their force, their community and even their victim. If that isn't true and won't be upheld, we should never entrust them with lethal weapons.
I completely concur, Mound. Unfortunately, with laws like the one passed in Louisiana, the responsibility that police officers have to be accountable gets lost in the rhetoric of heroism, etc. A cheap ploy to distract the masses from what is really happening, in my view.
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