Ronald Castorina, a New York State Assemblyman from Staten Island, has proposed a bill that would make it a hate crime to physically assault a police officer.
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If the “Blue Lives Matter” bill passes, assaulting a police officer would be increased one level on the felony scale and would carry with it a more severe punishment, Buzzfeed News reported.
Under current law, hate crime status can only be applied to cases in which a person is attacked based on their race, gender, national origin, sexual orientation, age, or disability status.
“It’s based on this climate in this country right now where police officers are being abused and they’re being disrespected, and we’re seeing they have a target on their back, in Louisiana and in Dallas”, Castorina told the Observer. Now, New York is considering a similar law.
“This bill is not political”, he said. Even the name for the NY bill and others like it, “Blue Lives Matter”, is squarely directed at the “Black Lives Matter” movement-a way of saying black lives don’t matter, blue lives do. Though the law was signed before the murder of three police officers by a black man in July, the state now considers intentional attacks on police or first responders to be a hate crime. So a uniform-motivated assault on an on-duty officer would jump from a Class C felony to a Class B felony, for example, dramatically increasing penalties for crimes that already come with sentences of up to 30 years in prison.
The officer, a black husband and father of a 4-month-old son, was upset with the vitriol some were showing for police and wrote of his desire to see people united.
Castorina was joined by New York City Councilman Joe Borelli.
Despite the heated “War on Cops” rhetoric recently on display at the Republican National Convention (RNC) and the horrific targeting of police by murderers in Dallas and Baton Rouge, it’s still a historically safe time to be a USA police officer.
Borelli, who is sponsoring a resolution in the City Council to support the bill, read aloud a Facebook post that Baton Rouge Officer Montrell Jackson wrote shortly before being shot down. But we’re not taking anything away from anyone else’s positions, motivations, or beliefs with this bill.
Castorina said he thinks the bill “should be supported by every member of the assembly – Democrats, Republicans”.
He added that he believe the bill will have an added benefit of protecting the public at protests and demonstrations. “Blue Lives Matter” is an objection to black protesters’ demands for real criminal justice, packaged as an affirmation of law enforcement. Will we also witness a Black Lives Matter bill put into law to protect the Black people who are faced with unwarranted brutalities and arrests? “In fact, the Black Lives Matter movement has had many a peaceful protest without incident, and certainly we want to promote that”, he said.
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The need of the Blue Lives Matter bill is still questionable since the definition of hate crime is yet left unclarified. At least the substance of “Blue Lives Matter” laws is concrete policy.
