| New York Times | - |
Hate
crime statutes originated as a response to bigotry, a special penalty
for singling people out for abuse based on factors like race, ethnicity,
sex, religion, sexual orientation or, most recently, gender identity.
Hate
crime statutes originated as a response to bigotry, a special penalty
for singling people out for abuse based on factors like race, ethnicity,
sex, religion, sexual orientation or, most recently, gender identity.
On Thursday, Louisiana became the first state to add law enforcement
officers to that list.
A
bill signed into law by Gov. John Bel Edwards on Thursday set off a
debate over whether the measure was really needed to protect officers,
or whether, as civil rights groups charged, it was an effort to dilute
the basic meaning of hate crimes and to undermine the movement
protesting the use of force by the police. A similar bill is pending in
Congress.
The
action comes at a time of fierce national debate over policing and
race. The high-profile deaths of African-Americans at the hands of the
police — from Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., to Eric Garner in New York
City — have prompted intense criticism of law enforcement. That
criticism has come in street demonstrations and on social media,
spawning the Black Lives Matter movement. Some law enforcement groups
have charged that those protests have led to an increase in attacks on
police officers, though there is little data to support that. Still,
some supporters of law enforcement have adopted the slogan, “Blue Lives
Matter.”
“I’ve
read various accounts of people who I would say were employing a
deliberate campaign to terrorize our officers,” said State
Representative Lance Harris, a Republican and the author of the Louisiana measure. “I just wanted to give an extra level of protection to the people who protect us.”
Ernest
L. Johnson Sr., president of the Louisiana branch of the N.A.A.C.P.,
countered, saying, “Hate crimes law is based upon a history of
discrimination against certain groups of people, and a bill like this
just tries to water down that reality, because there is not a history of
discrimination against police and firefighters.”
Mr. Edwards, a Democrat whose family ties to law enforcement are broad and deep, said:
“The men and women who put their lives on the line every day, often
under very dangerous circumstances, are true heroes and they deserve
every protection that we can give them.” Mr. Edwards’s brother, Daniel,
is the sheriff in Tangipahoa Parish; another brother, Frank, is the
police chief of Independence, a town in the parish; and their father,
grandfather and great-great-grandfather were also sheriffs in
Tangipahoa.
William
J. Johnson, executive director of the National Association of Police
Organizations, an alliance of officers’ unions, lauded the bill. “I
think it’s fair to say that officers are under attack nationwide, and
this is a reasonable response,” he said.
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But
violence against police officers is near an all-time low, according to
data kept by the F.B.I. and private groups. In recent years, homicides
have been less than half what they were in the 1970s, when there were
far fewer officers. In 2015, 41 officers on duty were “feloniously killed,” a category that excludes accidental deaths, the second-lowest figure in the last 60 years; the lowest was in 2014.
So far this year, 20 officers have been fatally shot
while on duty, according to the National Law Enforcement Officers
Memorial Fund. That is up from 16 at the same point last year, but it is
a pace that would still make 2016 one of the least deadly years on
record.
Mr. Harris, Mr. Johnson and others have cited two fatal episodes. Last August, Darren H. Goforth, a sheriff’s deputy in Harris County, Tex., was shot to death as he was getting gas for his patrol car; and in December 2014, Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, New York City police officers, were shot to death as they sat in a patrol car in Brooklyn.
In
both cases, law enforcement officials attributed the killings to hatred
of the police. The leader of a police union in New York blamed Mayor Bill de Blasio,
who had voiced sympathy for protests against police killings, for the
shooting there. The Harris County sheriff, Ron Hickman, said
anti-law-enforcement speech, which he linked to Black Lives Matter, had
promoted the killing of officers, a statement he later said he
regretted, though he said he still believed Deputy Goforth had been
targeted.
The
assailant in New York had made it clear that he intended to kill
officers in retaliation for the killings of black men, but in the Texas
case, officials have not said what evidence they have about a motive.
Both gunmen had histories of severe mental illness.
“Perception
matters, and low-frequency, high-impact events drive perception,”
whether that means viral video of a shooting by an officer or violence
against an officer, said Jim Bueermann, president of the Police
Foundation, a national group that researches and advises law
enforcement. “Police officers believe that the odds have increased that
they will be assaulted and ambushed and attacked, even though the
numbers may not support that.”
Louisiana,
like many states, already had a law that increased penalties for crimes
committed against emergency responders. The hate crimes statute, which
is separate, provides that up to five more years can be added to the
prison sentence of a person who is convicted of a felony if the court
finds that the victim was chosen based on prejudice against certain
groups.
Mr.
Harris noted that among the criteria already in the law were
“membership or service in, or employment with, an organization.” That
meant, he said, that adding law enforcement officers and firefighters
simply makes explicit what was already implied.
The
Louisiana bill caused few ripples until it was close to becoming law;
some of the groups now lined up in favor and against it were not aware
of it until a few days ago. It passed Louisiana’s Republican-controlled
House 92 to 0. In the Republican-controlled Senate, it passed 33 to 3.
Mr. Harris said he never expected it to draw much attention, but this
week he said he had fielded calls from around the country.
Allison
Padilla-Goodman, director of the Anti-Defamation League for the region
that includes Louisiana, said hate crime laws originated because
offenses motivated by bias were often brushed off, but “there is zero
confusion that a crime against a cop gets treated very seriously.”
She
added, “Hate crimes are about an identity-based bias, an immutable
characteristic that a person cannot change. Adding a professional
category changes and confuses the meaning of that.”
Mr.
Bueermann, a former police chief of Redlands, Calif., said that
covering officers under hate crimes laws “can reinforce the notion that
hatred of a group because of who they are has no place in our society,
which is good,” but it should be coupled with holding officers to higher
standards of conduct.
He cautioned that the law’s supporters had opened a new debate that could go in directions they might not like.
“At
some point, someone might suggest that abortion physicians should also
be protected,” he said. “That if you are hunted down because of your
profession, whatever the profession, that should be a hate crime.”
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