Yahoo News – by Liz GoodwinIn the wake of the murder of two New York City police officers and a national debate about policing, the National Fraternal Order of Police is asking for the Congressional hate crimes statute to be expanded to include crimes against police officers. The union has more than 300,000 members.
Violence against police officers that is motivated by anti-police bias should be prosecuted as a hate crime, the nation’s largest police union is arguing in a letter to President Barack Obama and Congressional leaders this week.
“Right now, it’s a hate crime if you attack someone solely because of the color of their skin, but it ought to be a hate crime if you attack someone solely because of the color of their uniform as well,” said Jim Pasco, the executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police.
“Enough is enough! It’s time for Congress to do something to protect the men and women who protect us,” Chuck Canterbury, the president of the union, said in a statement Monday. The group has long lobbied for harsher punishment for those who harm law enforcement officers.
The organization argues that “ambush attacks” — like the one in which NYPD officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu were killed last month — are frequently motivated by hatred of the police. According to FBI statistics, about 21.7 percent of non-accidental law enforcement deaths since 2004 were ambush attacks.
In general, the number of law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty has declined since the 1970s, reflecting the fall of violent crime in the United States in general. It’s not clear who in Congress would take up the union’s call to introduce such legislation. In the past, Democrats such as Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona and Republicans such as Peter King of New York have sponsored union-backed bills.
A hate crime is defined by Congress as a “criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, ethnic origin or sexual orientation.” If local authorities decline to prosecute a hate crime, the federal government can take over, making hate crime offenders more likely to face prosecution.
Ismaaiyl Brinsley, who shot himself after killing the NYPD officers last month, posted anti-police messages on social media before carrying out the ambush. His is the kind of crime the union hopes to prevent by classifying it as a hate crime.
The 1969 federal hate crimes statute has been expanded before. Sexual orientation and disability were added to the law by Congress in 2009 after lengthy lobbying efforts by LGBT groups.
According to FBI statistics, the majority of hate crimes are motivated by racial bias.
They need to get the killer cops off the payroll.
People are responding to the violence police started.
Innocent people are being tazed, beaten, and shot to death everyday
by cowards in police uniform…then they simply cry “I was afraid for my life”
and poof….free to murder, free to go out and do it again.
Stop protecting the bad apples.
The longer you leave the rotten in the barrel, the faster the whole
barrell will go bad.
If you’re so afraid of a child, a banana, or a toy gun, be a car salesman.
If you don’t know how to work in a school environment, with children, without becoming violent, using tazers, handcuffs, threats, and guns…get another job.
START PROTECTING THE PEOPLE WHO PAY YOUR SALARY.
and the people will protect you in return.
What good is it to make killing a cop a hate crime. Anyone who kills a cop is dead within the hour anyway.
Pre-Crime Prosecution
I like how those words roll over the tongue.
Say/publish/utter anything bad, even rightful according to the 1st amendment, and you can be picked up, and railroaded into jail… The buildup of the police state can continue a little longer behind the curtain without having the steel toe boot come down and kick everyone indiscrimenatory up the ass with cheerful siegs and bombastic march music.
“Anyone who kills a cop is dead within the hour anyway.”
Yeah… Ever imagined 100,000+ Eric Freins?
Taking each a cop out every day and targets of oportunity when it presents itself during the manhunt? (Ever seen Rambo?) THAT is their biggest fear.
The only things they can do that actually would make sense, is drop the bad cops, and start protecting the population from bad laws enforced by people who shouldn’t be cops, encoded by people that shouldn’t be politicians, in order to make America whole again and unite as one People.
They can do none of those choices, So the only thing they can predict IS the 100,000 Eric Freins.. Maybe even more… and Prepare for those. One of the reasons everyone except the golden children have to be disarmed.
It could never happen in America. Guess What?
The Founding Fathers have become Terrorists, Law and Order have become means of Oppression. Lying is converted to Public Relations via mainstream Media and Politics. Honor is Disgraced. Common Sense has become insanity. Orwell would have a field day rewriting his 1984 in this new America.
The Constitution has become a Joke, since if there was one thing that the founders could have never imagined is that a truely Free people could be enslaved and still call themselves Free by only believing that they are while being schackled by rules and regulations that would be null and void when held against the Constitution.
The problem will not be whether America, The Constitution and Bill of Rights, The Declaration of Independence, and the People will go silently into the night… The problem will be that no one will care whether they do, or not.
When Mr. Peccary comes to me and bares it’s commie snout
It will not be so good for it to hear my barrel shout
It my not go so well for me, for that I can’t regret
For there is one less snout to bare against my fellow patriot
Cops are such special little flowers, aren’t they?