Are law enforcement agencies susceptible to hate crimes?
The State should focus on protecting the real victims and shouldn’t encourage any bill that may hinder the ongoing efforts to protect citizens. At a time when there is a need for significant police reforms, “backing the blue” will hurt the efforts to address racism, bias, and other predominant issues regarding the relationship between citizens and the police force.
After several public deaths by police, including George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, citizens across America are crying out for police reforms, transparency, and accountability. The move to protect law enforcement itself is surprising and could be a step backward, encouraging misuse of power.
The State is already suffering from blatant abuse of power and a lack of accountability and transparency. Was there any introspection by law enforcement agencies after these recent events?
The focus should be on police reforms rather than protecting police officers and other emergency responders. For all we know, this bill could be used by enforcement agencies as a tool for further abuse.
Clifford McDonald states, “I think anyone who is witnessing a cop do his or her job and maybe sees something they don’t agree with should have the right to speak out about it, especially at the scene of a crime. When you look at the George Floyd incident, there were so many saying just let the man up, you already have him contained. Now you have added in the state of Georgia that if a cop determines that you are intimidating them while they are doing that, you can now be arrested and charged. That doesn’t make any sense.”
With this in the police force’s pocket, citizens will never know if their input on these matters will be regarded as harassment or even as a hate crime. We’ve already seen that the existing uncontrolled powers are misused; awarding protection of this kind could have terrible, unpredictable consequences.
Bills should first prioritize addressing the existing uncontrolled misuse of power the police force already possesses and then focus on other issues.
I believe “backing citizens first” should be the new slogan amidst the recent unfortunate events.
