Hate crime laws are usually intended to escalate punishments levied against people who commit crimes against protected classes of persons because of the target’s membership in a particular group or category of people. The establishment of protected classes usually aims to prevent discrimination against sociopolitically marginalized groups along lines of race, sex, religion, sexual orientation, or other more “intrinsic” traits (let’s leave aside problems with that idea of “intrinsic” for now). Louisiana just enacted a law that includes police (firefighters and paramedics were tacked on, but clearly not the primary targets) as part of a protected class of persons in hate crime law; a piece of “Blue Lives Matter” legislation. This law will be mirrored in other states. The bill supporters argue that this will help counter-balance a supposed “anti-police prejudice” that is making the lives of police especially dangerous. This kind of rationalization is little more than a form of authoritarian gas-lighting that obfuscates substantive and serious grievances people (especially more vulnerable people) have against the violence and political obstacles systematically produced and defended by police as an institution.
It is old hat to observe the lack of special danger for police when compared to loggers, gardeners, construction workers, garbage collectors, fishers, among other lines of work, and the danger has been on a downward trend for years. The “war on cops” cited by Blue Lives Matter supporters is a fabrication. Police may feel anxious that they are under more scrutiny or being counter-surveilled more frequently, but their frustrated expectations of possessing impunity behind a Thin Blue Line hardly constitutes evidence of a “war”. Even if it were more dangerous to be a cop, or more serious popular resistance against the police itself materialized, this would not justify categorizing police as a protected class within hate crime laws.
First, much like the phrase “Blue Lives Matter” itself, as well as its “All Lives Matter” cousin, this deflects attention from systematically perpetuated inequalities, discrimination, and violence by projecting an imagined situation of false equality. Completely abstracted from social context and power relations, police Continue reading
Justin C. Mueller 