US towns offer hate crime protections for cops. But does that help?

US towns offer hate crime protections for cops. But does that help?

A national police union is pushing for crimes against police officers to be treated as hate crimes, but experts say such protections may not be effective or necessary.

Christian Science Monitor
By Henry Gass
7 hours ago

When the police chief in Red Wing, Minn., approached the city council earlier this month asking for their support in gaining federal hate-crime protections for law enforcement, the city council didn’t hesitate.

The small city on the Mississippi River became the second place in the United States to pass a resolution calling for crimes against law enforcement to be prosecuted as hate crimes. The call for such protections is the latest development in a fraught year for law enforcement, which has seen both higher scrutiny over officers' use of lethal force, as well as a series of high-profile fatal ambush attacks against police.

But experts question whether such extra protections are necessary or would help prevent future attacks against police officers. Felonious attacks on police are at near-historic lows. And crimes against police officers are already punished more severely than identical crimes against civilians – both federally and in many states – which is the purpose hate crime protections are designed to serve.

"The primary symbolic value of hate crime legislation historically was extending an extra layer of legal shield over portions of society that had been under-protected, and I don’t think that’s true with law enforcement," says Seth Stoughton, an assistant professor at the University of South Carolina School of Law.

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