After the fatal shootings of a combined eight police officers here and in Dallas, lawmakers across the country want to increase the penalties for attacking law enforcement and other first responders, Governing magazine reports.
In the past year, so-called Blue Lives Matter bills have been proposed in at least nine states and in Congress. Louisiana became the first and the only state to label certain acts of violence against police a hate crime when Gov. John Bel Edwards signed the state’s Blue Lives Matter bill in May.
Supporters of such legislation argue that targeted attacks on cops are on the rise and that politicians need to take a stand against such violence. Critics counter that the bills dilute the meaning of a hate crime and detract from the more widespread issues of excessive use of force and racial discrimination by police.
While the recent attacks on police have raised the visibility of Blue Lives Matter proposals, so far, data collected by the FBI don’t show an uptick in deadly assaults on police officers. Last year, 41 officers were intentionally killed in the line of duty by suspects, which was not only a decline from 2014 but also the second lowest total in 12 years.
But police leaders still worry about targeted officer killings, motivated by anger over discriminatory policing. And it’s possible that the FBI statistics don’t capture the full story. A law enforcement nonprofit released a report this week that found deadly shootings of police appear to be on the rise when comparing the first six months of 2016 to the first six months of 2015.
“Assassinations of police officers are strictly based on the bias of the gunmen, so we feel that it fits within the definition of a hate crime,” says Chuck Canterbury, president of the Fraternal Order of Police, adding “it’s not a solution. It just points out that it’s a problem.”
Civil rights groups, while condemning violence against police, says labeling violence against police officers a hate crime is inappropriate. The Anti-Defamation League argues that “the list of personal characteristics included in hate crimes laws should remain limited to immutable characteristics, those qualities that can or should not be changed.”
