The country is reeling. The shooting of 11 Dallas police officers—five of whom were killed—came while they patrolled a peaceful protest against police violence. Two civilians were also wounded, according to the Dallas mayor’s office. It’s a tragic, saddening act of violence that’s likely to inflame already heated tensions over issues of race and policing.
Hate crimes laws were created to stiffen penalties for crimes against individuals or groups based on immutable identities, such as race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or gender identity. Legal protections like these, which were enacted as far back as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, were put in place for people who have been subject to decades, if not centuries, of violence because of who they are. For black people in particular, that’s historically included the specter of vigilante lynchings, death threats during school desegregation, physical intimidation at the ballot box, and even terrorist attacks on black businesses and churches such as what transpired last summer in Charleston. These crimes are fueled by supremacist hate based on characteristics that people cannot change or, in the case of religion, should not be forced to change because of fear or intimidation.
As the Guardian has previously reported, police fatalities have decreased steadily from a peak of about 127 annually in the 1970s to 41 in 2015—a 12-year low. By contrast, the Guardian‘s police shootings database shows that police in the U.S. killed 1,146 people last year. Per those numbers, black people were more than twice as likely as white people to be shot and killed by police, and a total of 79 unarmed black people were killed by police or died while in custody.
Organized protests aren’t to blame for the police deaths in downtown Dallas. Before shots rang out the protest was peaceful. And after, video footage shows protesters running for cover, afraid for their own lives. In a statement following the Dallas attack, the national Black Lives Matter organization said, “Black activists have raised the call for an end to violence, not an escalation of it. Yesterday’s attack was the result of actions of a lone gunman. To assign the actions of one person to an entire movement is dangerous and irresponsible.”
But if Alderman Burke and his City Council peers seek more respect for police and emergency workers, the proposed Blue Lives Matter ordinance isn’t the way to find it.
