It will be no surprise if a “Blue Lives Matter” bill moves through the rest of the lawmaking process as easily as it did a Mississippi Senate committee hearing Tuesday.
The Senate Judiciary A Committee’s bill would double the penalties for any crime committed against police officers, firefighters and emergency medical technicians because of their job. If signed into law, the bill would treat such cases as hate crimes, adding the three jobs to an existing list of doubled penalties against those who target people for race, ethnicity, religion or gender.
The committee chairman said last year’s ambush shootings of police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge make it necessary for Mississippi to add public safety officers to the hate crimes law. Gov. Phil Bryant and Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves already have said they support the stronger penalties, making passage of this bill in some form almost certain.
The shootings in Texas and Louisiana occurred after police in the two cities were involved in fatal shootings of black residents. While the chairman said he is unaware of any incidents where police in Mississippi have been targeted for retribution in that fashion, it’s foolish to pretend the possibility doesn’t exist. It was not too long ago, after all, when two Hattiesburg police officers, including one who grew up in Pike County, got killed during a routine traffic stop.
The Legislature seems intent to show that its commitment to public safety officers is a very deep blue. The bill came out of the committee after it killed an amendment to restrict the hate crime designation to cases when officers are in uniform. The panel also rejected another proposal to make it a hate crime for a police officer to kill someone in violation of department procedures.
Assuming this bill becomes law, it may accomplish two things. It will let police officers, firefighters and EMTs know that the state appreciates the risks they take, and it should provide a bit of extra attention to the fact that the state already has a hate crimes law.
