Current Events > NY senate passes bill making assaulting a cop a hate crime

(+) Yeah! (+)

http://gothamist.com/2017/05/10/police_hate_crime_protection.php

The State Senate on Tuesday passed a bill that would make assaulting a police officer, EMT, or other first responder akin to a hate crime. The bill, sponsored by Republican Senator Fred Ashkar of Binghamton, passed 56-6 with bipartisan support.

"The passage of stiffer penalties will not single-handedly protect all of our emergency service workers but we must make it clear that targeted offenses against our Community Heroes will not be taken lightly," stated Ashkar, a former Broome County undersherriff. "We will not be silent while you are selfless." The law would make assault on an on-duty cop, currently a Class C Felony, a Class B Felony. In general, a person convicted of intentionally targeting an officer or first responder would see their charge elevated one level.

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.
Staten Island Assemblyman Ron Castorina introduced similar legislation last summer, focused specifically on police officers.

In both cases, legislators said they were inspired by a perceived uptick in assaults on men and women in uniform. Castorina referenced the killings of Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu while they sat in their patrol car in Bed-Stuy in December 2014, and, more recently, the killings of uniformed officers during a Black Lives Matter protest in Dallas, and in a Baton Rouge parking lot. Ashkar, meanwhile, referenced a 2016 study from the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund indicating a ten percent increase in police officer fatalities over the year previous, totaling 135.

Police reform advocates criticized Ashkar's bill, dismissing this supporting evidence as selective. Communities United for Police Reform referenced recent FBI and Bureau of Justice statistics showing that police fatalities and murders, as well as assaults against cops and police officer injuries on duty, have been on the decline for decades in the US.

"Hate crimes law is meant to protect New Yorkers who are members of groups that have historically been subjected to marginalization and/or discrimination, and employment is no basis for such protections," the group said in a statement.

"New York can be no progressive capital when hate crimes law protections are misguidedly extended to police while they remain denied to New Yorkers who actually experience discrimination based on their gender identity or expression," they added.

Last month, the State Senate’s Investigations and Government Operations Committee again voted down the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act, which has been passed in the Assembly nine years in a row and would update the Human Rights Law to prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender identity or expression.

The Community Heroes Protection Act has been sent to the Assembly, though a vote has yet to be scheduled. Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie's office did not immediately comment on the bill.

---

those poor oppressed jack-booted thugs

treewojima posted...

those poor oppressed jack-booted thugs

Do you support assaulting cops?
---

Good.
---

About time. That BLM anti-cop hatred is as despicable as racism.
---

I thought assaults on cops already came with harsher punishments.
---

How about just assaulting anyone is a hate crime?

Yet when a cop shoots and kills a black child for being black it's a paid vacation.
---

SGT_Conti posted...

I thought assaults on cops already came with harsher punishments.

This. They should be more worried about getting shot than being charged with a hate crime.

Bad. There's already harsh enough penalties
---

@DawkinsNumber4
---

What about professors? Deliverypersons? Mall kiosk salesmen? This is ridiculous.

#AllJobsMatter

Smashingpmkns posted...

Yet when a cop shoots and kills a black child for being black it's a paid vacation.

---

Microwaved_Eggs posted...

Smashingpmkns posted...

Yet when a cop shoots and kills a black child for being black it's a paid vacation.

Patently absurd.
---

considering people assault cops specifically because they are a cop and have a hatred of cops, I suppose this makes sense

but cops arent a race...
---

but they should have to prove they attack them BECAUSE they were cops and that they hate cops

E32005 posted...

but cops arent a race...

If I blow up a mormon church because they are mormon is it not a hate crime?

what a joke
---

Milkman5 posted...

E32005 posted...

but cops arent a race...

If I blow up a mormon church because they are mormon is it not a hate crime?

its dangerous to equate religion with law enforcement
---

kinda funny how you sign up to be a cop knowing it's a dangerous job, but then they do shit like this
---

lol

Milkman5 posted...

considering people assault cops specifically because they are a cop and have a hatred of cops, I suppose this makes sense

Huge difference from anyone else typically protected by hate crime laws being that a cop can take off that uniform any time he wants.
---

#BlueLivesMatter

afaik, assaulting an officer is already its own category of escalation. this just seems unnecessary and entirely political.
---

Antifar posted...

The State Senate on Tuesday passed a bill that would make assaulting a police officer, EMT, or other first responder akin to a hate crime.

I feel that a lot of people here missed the bolded part.
---

Sounds good to me!
---

meingott posted...

treewojima posted...

those poor oppressed jack-booted thugs

Do you support assaulting cops?

i support defending yourself from cops

So did Big Black commit a hate crime in this video?

https://youtu.be/JMZa1GBKulw?t=1m28s
---

Milkman5 posted...

considering people assault cops specifically because they are a cop and have a hatred of cops, I suppose this makes sense

In that case it should be a hate crime. But "assault" is too broad of a term. Physically touching a police officer can be considered assault; it doesn't even have to be striking a police officer, just touching.
---

Milkman5 posted...

considering people assault cops specifically because they are a cop and have a hatred of cops, I suppose this makes sense

Assaulting police officers already carries a heavier penalty, though.
---

This is as stupid as making assaulting a black guy a hate crime

StucklnMyPants posted...

In that case it should be a hate crime. But "assault" is too broad of a term. Physically touching a police officer can be considered assault; it doesn't even have to be striking a police officer, just touching.

Accidentally getting your blood on their uniforms is also assault.
---

St0rmFury posted...

Antifar posted...

The State Senate on Tuesday passed a bill that would make assaulting a police officer, EMT, or other first responder akin to a hate crime.

I feel that a lot of people here missed the bolded part.

I mentioned it earlier in the topic, but I thought emergency personnel were typically already protected by stiffer punishments, so this kind of law is redundant. If you're just tossing hate crime penalties onto it, then you might as well just increase the original sentence range to begin with instead of expanding hate crime laws to encompass occupations as well.
---

Assaulting a police officer is already an automatic felony. The hate crime shit seems redundant and kind of virtue signalish
---