The National Fraternal Order of Police has launched a campaign to change federal law to add attacks on police as a hate crime. In a letter to President Barack Obama and Congress, the powerful union cites the murders of two New York City police officers, Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu. The demand would treat an attack based on status as the same as an attack based on race. Given the Administration’s expedited investigations of civil rights violations involving deaths caused by police officers in Missouri and New York, the change would create an interesting situation where both future suspects and officers would be arguably protections under federal hate crime laws.
Currently, the federal law states that it is 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.”
Jim Pasco, the executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police, insisted that “[r]ight 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.”
Many of us have been alarmed by the intense anti-police rhetoric that has arisen in some protests, including chants for more dead police officers. Despite this sympathy, however, the addition to a status as a hate crime category raises some difficult questions about the expansion of this law, which has been viewed as troubling in many circumstances by civil libertarians.
There have been an alarming increase in the shooting of police officers in the last year. However, there are already ample criminal provisions addressing such crimes, including crimes specifically covering attacks on police offices or fire fighters. Adding a new category to the hate crimes statute is unlikely to offer any additional deference when you already have these laws as well as standard charges for murder etc. The question is whether we want to continue to expand this law to cover attacks allegedly made on the basis of status. There are also questions of what the requisite proof would be in such cases.
There is also an obvious concern that any assault on a police officer could be potentially classified as a hate crime. Citizens often voice contempt or anger at police. In some confrontations, we have seen even the slightest forms of assault charged under existing laws. Some of those cases could not be enhanced with a hate crime charge. Defense attorneys have long complained that prosecutors over-charge such cases in deference to their colleagues in police departments. There is often pressure to use every possible charge against someone who is accused of assaulting an officer. There is a danger that free speech rights could be implicated in such prosecutions as well as other protections.
While there will be powerful political pressures for Congress to yield to this demand, it is worth considering such questions before taking such step. First and foremost is the question of whether such a change is really needed in light of existing laws. There may be good arguments for the inclusion to be made but I hope that there is not a rush to take action due to our collective anger over these horrific attacks on police officers. This is a question that raises some novel questions about how such crimes are defined and proven.
What do you think?
Source: Yahoo
I still cannot understand how we square freedom of expression with a provision that enhances sentencing based upon expression and speech.
It’s the funny little thing called MOTIVE. It means the difference bewteen negligent homicide and capital murder. One is an accident. The other IS BASED ON YOUR THOUGHT PROCESSESS LEADING UP TO THE CRIME WHICH MADE IT DELIBERATE.
Oh, I’m sorry, that means we have to take thoughts into account. My bad.
The lives of scum like murders, thieves, burglars, robbers and swindlers are NOT equal to the lives of honest, hard-working, ordinary people, and their lives certainly should not be treated as sacred.
Who makes that determination? You? I take it that the “All men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator…” thing was not part of your schoolwork in your distant youth?
They are vermin, and should be exterminated like cockroaches.
So we need to have a…wait for it…Final Solution for people you don’t like or who do not live up to your ideals?
Interesting.
So, if I were to kill a burglar breaking into my home, would that be a hate crime?
Almost certainly not, although IANAL, so YMMV.
That being said…
A case in Wisconsin ( I believe) last year featured an angry older, single white man who deliberately lured two teens into his house with the intent of laying in wait to kill them, which he did while audio taping the event. He left doors open, interesting things in view etc to try to invite potential burglars in while he hid with several firearms.
He executed the second teen, a girl, with a shot into her head as she lay wounded and gasping for breath. All on tape. He described the execution shot with satisfaction.
The jury sent him up the river in record time.
Is this the sort of thing you had in mind? Your other statements seem to indicate you would support this sort of thing.
AnneMarie, yes, I make that determination. It’s my opinion. I don’t make “laws” that other people are supposed to follow just because they live in the same collection of people as I do. I don’t believe in a “Creator”, so I am free to form my own classifications of what makes people good or bad, based upon their behaviors toward others, and I don’t believe all people are equal. They certainly aren’t treated that way in this world. “IANAL, so YMMV”?? I don’t speak in single character abbreviations, so I don’t know what you mean, but I assume it is a put-down of some sort. My suggestion is that killing a burglar because I hate them would be a hate crime sometime in the near future, even though it obviously is not currently. And, of course, the story you present from Wisconsin is merely a straw-man argument without relevance to me or my opinion.
Congress can add police when they update the hate crime laws with the Special Snowflake Protection Act (SSPA) about to be introduced.
I still cannot understand how we square freedom of expression with a provision that enhances sentencing based upon expression and speech.
Hate crimes laws exist because of the terror effect that thse crimes have on a specific population. Lynching a black man in front of a polling place in 1958 isn’t just murder, and common sense directs us to view the message sent to every other black citizen in the area: if you register to vote…you die. Killing a random gay couple on a street sends a similar message to other GLBT people:
holding hands in public will get you killed.
Hate crimes do not just apply to the proximate victim(s). They influence the attitudes and quality of life of every other member of the community shared by the victim(s).
Take an airline counter shooting as an example, similar to the incident at the El Al counter at LAX about 13 years ago.
Say the guy walks in with a rifle and opens fire randomly without saying anything about motive. We take him for a nut and the incident is forgotten two days later. (sadly, that is a subject for horror in of itself that shootings are now forgettable news)
But now, say the guy walks in screaming about the “Zionist Entity” and “Death to the Zionist infidels!”, but the casualty count and damage is the same as in incident 1.0.
We now see this as an example of lone wolf terrorism. His motive was to kill Jewish people and their allies in a public venue and cause fear to other Jewish people.
So do we treat one crime exactly the same as the other? Should the Wrld Trade Center attacks been treated as state level murder cases instead of terrorism in order to not have “thought crime” punishment as some of you folks are so keen on preaching about?
The notion that all crime in a category should be treated equally seems utterly preposterous to me and the “thought crimes” canard is simply an ideological rational for dismissing the imact that terror related hate crimes have on people who do not look like YOU.
Bin Laden was not just an accessry to murder, and we know it. He was a terrorist, and was killed as such. The klansmen who hanged and shot black, Mexican and the occasional white civil rights workers…were not just murderers, and we know it. They were engaged in terror. The fact that their “thought crimes” actually formed the criminal motivation for the acts ABSOLUTELY SHOULD BE HELD AGAINST THEM.
Hate Crimes… Political designations placed on existing criminal statutes that were enacted by pandering politicians based strictly on emotions.
As others have pointed out… If the sentence is life imprisonment for murder, does it matter if it was a “hate” murder? The sentence is still life imprisonment.
“Hate Crimes” are nothing more than yet another example of the government doing “something” to make the politicians and bureaucrats “feel” better, but that has NO benefit or positive effect in the real world.
The lives of scum like murders, thieves, burglars, robbers and swindlers are NOT equal to the lives of honest, hard-working, ordinary people, and their lives certainly should not be treated as sacred. They are vermin, and should be exterminated like cockroaches. They are even below bankers and politicians in their value to humanity. And that’s just a impression of how I really feel. So, if I were to kill a burglar breaking into my home, would that be a hate crime? In this inverted-justice world of today, I’m guessing it would, but to me it would be only appropriate and result in a better society without them.
I have frequently argued that hate crime legislation is bad public policy and that one’s motive in committing a criminal offense ought to be a material consideration only in the sentencing phase of a case. That applies as much to police officers as to any other class of persons.
Murder, or the intentional taking of the life of another should be punished by either execution or life in prison without parole. Sometimes people get killed in an unrelated act and that’s where manslaughter comes in. Gross negligence, such as when Zimmerman killed Martin should equal twenty years before parole. And so on. Zimmerman might have felt like killing Martin because he was black. He might have felt like killing him to pump up his ego. None of that can be proved. What can be proved is that he took a gun with him when he created an altercation. He was advised to stay out of it. Protocol demanded that he stay out of it. That is gross negligent manslaughter. Angela Corey’s ego tantrum in layering on her emotions, illusions of hate, etc caused her to charge him with murder, a charge he easily beat.
The problem of factoring in or accusing a criminal of this or that emotion is that the knife cuts both ways. The slippery suits can get a killer off of the proper charge by arguing emotions, intentions, hate, whoops. The prosecution can layer on all sorts of extraneous intentions as well. However, it is usually the poor sap that is too poor to afford a really slippery suit that is the victim and the rich guy who can and gets off. A murder is a murder is a murder. A life is a life is a life.
Treat all lives as equal and sacred.
My opinion? Simple: we do not need another addition to our laws. What we need is better equitable enforcement of the laws that exist.
Is there any evidence classifying crime based on these “hate” standards has had any effect on crime? I seriously doubt anyone bent on committing a crime is deterred simply because it may be considered a hate crime.
Hate crimes should be eliminated completely. They’re crimes of thought, not crimes of behavior. Plus I fail to see why it’s worse to murder someone because of their race, religion, disability, ethnic origin or sexual orientation or to murder them because you want to steal their sneakers.
Yep. Unless you are a professional assassin or a thrill killer you pretty much have to have some hate in you to murder someone.
I hate it when igPays do apCray like this.
I think that the category of “hate crime” is something that should be dispensed with.
Crime is crime. Murder is murder. The motivation behind crime should be examined on a case by case basis. The composition of the victim may or MAY NOT be relevant to the crime. Whether the crime is against a black person or a white person or a hispanic person should be immaterial until the motivation of the perpetrator has been established.
To automatically claim that the motive is “hate” based merely on the classification of the victim is to establish an automatic bias in the minds of the jurors or in the legal system itself.
The crime may have nothing whatsoever to do with the victim’s classification.
In addition, this constant focus and obsession with classifying people is not healthy for society.
DBQ – I think you could make the claim that most murders are hate crimes.
This is divisive, but all hate crimes balkanize the worthy from the unworthy.
While I completely understand and sympathize with the reasons the FOP would like such a classification, I disagree this should be designated as a hate crime due to the legislative intent behind what constituted the current statutes. I tend to believe that the hate crime aspect of murders is often selectively enforced by the federal government to begin with.
I agree that there is sufficient aggravators for which murders of law enforcement officers often become elevated to capital offenses on both the state and federal levels. However, many states do not have death penalties and federal prosecution for certain hate crimes can carry a death penalty.
In some states and some circles of the police world there is a view that those who kill cops receive disproportionately lower sentences that “what they deserve.” And with high profile cases of paroles of police murderers it has sensitized officers to this type of matter.
Federal criminalization of state crimes has to stop.
Why is a cop more deserving of federal protection than an American citizen?
We have a history of passing bad laws for good reasons – let’s step away from the momentary passions and think before we act.
So does Holder.
This is not going to happen. Obama hates cops.
In a related story, the ABA has written a letter, asking attorney jokes be listed as a hate crime.
Hate crimes are Orwellian and a prime example of what occurs when PC infects our legal system. They need to be found unconstitutional and have this long nightmare of thought crimes become just a note in history.