Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.

Via KPLC:

Following a spike in deadly attacks on police, more than a dozen states have responded this year with “Blue Lives Matter” laws that come down even harder on crimes against law enforcement officers, raising concern among some civil rights activists of a potential setback in police-community relations.

The new measures build upon existing statutes allowing harsher sentences for people who kill or assault police. They impose even tougher penalties, extend them to more offenses, including certain nonviolent ones such as trespassing in Missouri, and broaden the list of victims covered to include off-duty officers, police relatives and some civilians at law enforcement agencies.

Proponents say an escalation of violence against police justifies the heightened protections.

“What we’re getting into as a society is that people are targeting police officers not by something that they may have done to them, but just because they’re wearing that uniform,” said Republican state Rep. Shawn Rhoads of Missouri, a former detective.

People who have been protesting aggressive police tactics are expressing alarm.

“This is another form of heightened repression of activists,” said Zaki Baruti, an activist and community organizer from St. Louis County. “It sends a message to protesters that we better not look at police cross-eyed.”[…]

Some question whether such steps are a deterrent. Jens Ohlin, a criminal law expert at Cornell University Law School in New York, said the new laws “reek of political pressure to do something symbolic as a way of expressing solidarity with police officers.”

“The problems that need to be solved are really problems on the ground. They’re not gaps in the statute,” Ohlin said. “You need to give police officers the tools necessary to protect themselves on the street, and you have to defuse dangerous situations on the ground before they escalate into violence against police officers.”

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